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March 28, 2024, 10:45:17 PM

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ITS WAR!!!

Started by Dr Rock, April 14, 2018, 07:44:40 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Jakey Chesterton


Twed





Discourse in 2018. Rich white soccer moms doing the work of the propagandists for them, crushing dissent and anger over war with a privileged power word. "Bot", and then off to get a sugar drink from Starbucks in a Humvee.

BlodwynPig

Yurik had a smart reply to that.


Jakey Chesterton

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/15/syria-assad-doing-nothing-disastrous-policy-missile-strikes

Quote
Action has consequences and they are not always the ones intended and hoped for. That was the grisly lesson of Iraq. Inaction also has consequences. Doing nothing can have a price every bit as high. I'd think better of the non-interventionists if they'd ever once admit that. Inaction has been a terrible choice in Syria.

Interventionists have been rightly obliged to own all that went horribly wrong in Iraq. Non-interventionists, the horrors of Syria are on you.

WTF is going on at that newspaper?

George Oscar Bluth II

I dunno, it's a fair point isn't it? We considered intervening in Syria, before Russia got involved, didn't (I still think correctly). The current situation in Syria, the mass slaughter etc, is a consequence of that decision, as well as hundreds of other decisions.

Now, I think it's quite possible to argue, and maybe even correct, that things would be even worse if we had got involved in 2013.

Bazooka

If a chef was to make a WAR based dish, would it taste sour, salty, bitter, spicy or too rich? That and many more questions will be asked today on Question Time live at Blackpool Pleasure Beach.

wooders1978

I think the fact that every time we've "intervened" in recent history we've ballsed up, lost interest and generally left the places in a far worse situation ought to be considered

Shoulders?-Stomach!

If we had intervened it needed to be decisive and overwhelming and not give Russia a chance to do anything.

The Arab Spring would have provided cover for that, but we'd also have had to fight IS afterwards.

Framing it as interventionist vs non. and trying to pin the blame is infantile. What is happening in Syria isn't the fault of people who want to intervene or people who didn't want to intervene.

What's happening is a consequence of demagoguery and dictatorships causing malcontent and a power vacuum when they can't assert their authority which is filled by extremists, many of whom were radicalised not primarily as a consequence of Iraq (though that wouldn't have helped) but as a consequence of their repression by Assad and the lack of moderate opposing voices.

This isn't a civil war we are to blame for as we aren't the world police. It isn't our responsibility to steer it to a conclusion.

Dr Syntax Head

Can we stop using the word 'we' please? It's them. I'm not doing any war. It's like football men who go on about "We smashed 'em mate down old Trafford". No you didn't. The BMW driving rapists on the pitch did.

Sorry. War is making me angry.

That said, with Plymouth being a naval base and all that hopefully it'll be one of the first places to be bombed. It might make the place more pleasant to live in har har

dex

I wonder what everybody on here's best mate, Ricky Gervais thinks about all this?

George Oscar Bluth II

Don't forget climate change. Big causal factor in the protests in Syria in 2011.

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on April 15, 2018, 09:07:16 AM
If we had intervened it needed to be decisive and overwhelming and not give Russia a chance to do anything.

This is the thing. The 2013 plan was...there wasn't one. Cameron saying "you'll really have to trust us on this". But probably it'd have amounted to "punishment strikes".

To end the war then we'd have probably needed a full on ground invasion, as well as a plan to fight multiple enemies and a postwar plan to rebuild the country and to prevent it all kicking off again.

Maybe all this would have been possible (history suggests not) but literally no-one wanted it, and literally no-one would have been able to afford it.

I remember reading recently about how much Syria is costing Russia at the moment, money they don't really have for...not much in return, except for securing their bases on the Med.

Quote from: Dr Syntax Head on April 15, 2018, 09:15:20 AMSorry. War is making me angry.

Worth pointing out: the war was already happening and will continue to happen, regardless of what the US and UK does.

Paul Calf

"We" are very much responsible for the turmoil in the Middle East because "we" have spent the last 180 years making sure it stays that way.

Funcrusher

Does the panel think that US antagonism of Russia is a kind of proxy war with China?

Dr Syntax Head

I wonder where one might source one of those NBC suits? And a big Hazmat type tent thing like out of x-files? Just thinking ahead

Quote from: biggytitbo on April 14, 2018, 08:04:23 PM
Why call it war when you can call it unprovoked mass murder by notorious serial war criminals?

I'm no supporter of this military action, but was it a mass murder or was it some chemical factories being blown up?

If there are no more attacks from the west, then this was moderately successful was it not?

Putin didn't shoot down the missiles and attack their sources as claimed, were there any civilians killed?

I think I read that someone fleeing the area was killed

I'm deliberately taking the "evidence" that Assad was responsible at face value because we only have Syria and the Russians disagreeing, but it appears the French evidence is someone taking selfies on Instagram

There are some really weird videos online.

Sorry, there are some really weird videos online of people apparently faking these sorts of attacks, but I have no idea how influential and widespread those videos are.

George Oscar Bluth II

Does biggy get upset at, say, Russian bombing of Syria?

Or Syrian government bombing of Syria?

Jakey Chesterton

#77
Quote from: George Oscar Bluth II on April 15, 2018, 08:51:39 AM
I dunno, it's a fair point isn't it? We considered intervening in Syria, before Russia got involved, didn't (I still think correctly). The current situation in Syria, the mass slaughter etc, is a consequence of that decision, as well as hundreds of other decisions.

Now, I think it's quite possible to argue, and maybe even correct, that things would be even worse if we had got involved in 2013.

No, it's not a fair point. The war in Syria is the result of absoloutely massive 'intervention':

https://fair.org/home/down-the-memory-hole-nyt-erases-cias-efforts-to-overthrow-syrias-government/

Quote
First, let's establish what we do know. Based on multiple reports over the past three-and-a-half years, we know that the Central Intelligence Agency set up a secret program of arming, funding and training anti-Assad forces. This has been reported by major outlets, including the New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel and, most recently, the Washington Post, which—partly thanks to the Snowden revelations—detailed a program that trained approximately 10,000 rebel fighters at a cost of $1 billion a year, or roughly 1/15th of the CIA's official annual budget.

The WP article is behind a paywall but you can confirm it says that if you google the content and look at the result.

That yearly billion is just what we are aware of one branch of the American state doing in this war. There are other branches, and then there are what their allies in Turkey, the Gulf monarchies, France, the UK,  Israel etc. are doing. These are the richest and most powerful countries in the world, while Syria had a GDP of $40 billion in 2007 ( https://data.worldbank.org/country/syrian-arab-republic ) . As said, this is just what we're currently aware of

Directly previous to Russia coming in the rebels had been advancing in Idlib due to a 'CIA vetted' influx of American guided anti tank missiles (I don't know whether they're included in the aforementioned billion):

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/04/28/syrias-revitalized-rebels-make-big-gains-in-assads-heartland/

Quote
The recent offensives in Idlib have been strikingly swift — thanks in large part to suicide bombers and American anti-tank TOW missiles. In most cases, regime forces have only held out for hours or a few days before retreating. The rebels have also fought with rare harmony under the banner of Jaish al-Fateh ("the Army of Conquest"), a coalition made up of mostly Islamist forces led by Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra.

Those groups would have had no recourse to government armour without those missiles. Their supply and Ahrar's, Nusras' etc. consequent advances in Idlib triggered the Russian air support for the SAA later that year.

That's just a couple of examples. It genuinely concerns me that people can call this 'non-intervention'. It's completely Orwellian. Nevermind that the coalition are currently occupying almost all Syrian oilfields and saying they won't leave. Imagine if somehow  foreign armies bombing London were also occupying Scotland, various other bits  of the northern UK and the north sea oilfields and this was described as 'non-intervention'*. Absoloutely astonishing.

*Of course oil exports were/are much more important for the Syrian economy.

The Lion King

Quote from: Dr Syntax Head on April 15, 2018, 09:15:20 AM
That said, with Plymouth being a naval base and all that hopefully it'll be one of the first places to be bombed. It might make the place more pleasant to live in har har

If it gets bombed you make a roundabout out of it, that's the Plymouth way.


George Oscar Bluth II

Quote from: Jakey Chesterton on April 15, 2018, 10:08:40 AM
No, it's not a fair point. The war in Syria is the result of absoloutely massive 'intervention':


When I said "intervention" I obviously meant overt, bomb dropping intervention.

Like the one Russia is doing.

Funcrusher

Quote from: George Oscar Bluth II on April 15, 2018, 10:20:08 AM
When I said "intervention" I obviously meant overt, bomb dropping intervention.

Like the one Russia is doing.

So arming and training people or psyops aren't intervention?

biggytitbo

Quote from: Twed on April 15, 2018, 12:56:54 AM




Discourse in 2018. Rich white soccer moms doing the work of the propagandists for them, crushing dissent and anger over war with a privileged power word. "Bot", and then off to get a sugar drink from Starbucks in a Humvee.


I've been called a Russian bot multiple times in twitter, its becoming a universal form of dismissal like conspiracy theorist.

Jakey Chesterton

Quote from: George Oscar Bluth II on April 15, 2018, 10:20:08 AM
When I said "intervention" I obviously meant overt, bomb dropping intervention.

Like the one Russia is doing.

Thanks for the education  in Newspeak mate.

massive bereavement

Quote from: biggytitbo on April 15, 2018, 10:24:59 AM

I've been called a Russian bot multiple times in twitter, its becoming a universal form of dismissal like conspiracy theorist.

and "Putin fanboy"

Jakey Chesterton

Quote from: Funcrusher on April 15, 2018, 10:24:10 AM
So arming and training people or psyops aren't intervention?

Also literally occupying the part of the country producing its former chief export with your armies.

biggytitbo

Quote from: George Oscar Bluth II on April 15, 2018, 10:20:08 AM
When I said "intervention" I obviously meant overt, bomb dropping intervention.

Like the one Russia is doing.


Unlike us, Russia are in Syria legally by invitation from the Syrian government. They're there to protect Syrian forces from western backed terrorists and jihadists.

George Oscar Bluth II

Quote from: Funcrusher on April 15, 2018, 10:24:10 AM
So arming and training people or psyops aren't intervention?

Different levels, surely.

Quote from: biggytitbo on April 15, 2018, 10:24:59 AMI've been called a Russian bot multiple times in twitter, its becoming a universal form of dismissal like conspiracy theorist.

Maybe have a think about why this is.

Every post of yours onn here may as well be written by the Russian foreign ministry.

Except for the animal whimsy. Can't imagine they'd be any good at that.

Quote from: biggytitbo on April 15, 2018, 10:27:06 AM

Unlike us, Russia are in Syria legally by invitation from the Syrian government. They're there to protect Syrian forces from western backed terrorists and jihadists.

Sergei_Lavrov has logged in

biggytitbo


biggytitbo

Quote from: George Oscar Bluth II on April 15, 2018, 10:28:26 AM
Different levels, surely.

Maybe have a think about why this is.

Every post of yours onn here may as well be written by the Russian foreign ministry.

Except for the animal whimsy. Can't imagine they'd be any good at that.

Sergei_Lavrov has logged in


American empire apologist.

Danger Man

When can we start saying American Bot?