And next, Syria?

[J Ed]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/m...n-syria.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&smid=tw-share&

Good article on the victiminisation of Alawites

 

[goldenecitrone]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/m...n-syria.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&smid=tw-share&

Good article on the victiminisation of Alawites

To many Syrians, Mezze 86 is a terrifying place, a stronghold for regime officers and the ruthless paramilitary gunmen known as shabiha, or “ghosts.” These are the men accused of carrying out much of the torture and killing that has left more than 90,000 people dead since the Syrian uprising began two years ago. Some of the older men living in the neighborhood are veterans of the notorious defense brigades, which helped carry out the 1982 massacre of Hama, where between 10,000 and 30,000 people were killed in less than a month. Yet Mezze 86 now emanates a sense of aggrieved martyrdom. The streets are lined with colorful portraits of dead soldiers; every household proclaims the fallen and the wounded and the vanished.

Sad, but you can understand why other Syrians might have lost patience with the torturers and their families.

 

[J Ed]

How can you read that article and come to the conclusion that that's what's going on?

 

[goldenecitrone]

How can you read that article and come to the conclusion that that's what's going on?

No one in the room would say it, but there was an unspoken sense that they, too, were victims of the regime. After two years of bloody insurrection, Syria’s small Alawite community remains the war’s opaque protagonist, a core of loyalists whose fate is now irrevocably tied to Assad’s. Alawite officers commanded the regime’s shock troops when the first protests broke out in March 2011 — jailing, torturing and killing demonstrators and setting Syria on a different path from all the other Arab uprisings. Assad’s intelligence apparatus did everything it could to stoke sectarian fears and blunt the protesters’ message of peaceful change

This is what started it all.

 

[TomUS]

This is what started it all.

Right, but some here would like that to be forgotten & push the idea that this rebellion is a plot by Western imperialists & Israel in cahoots with AQ.

 

[Casually Red]

Right, but some here would like that to be forgotten & push the idea that this rebellion is a plot by Western imperialists & Israel in cahoots with AQ.

um..what side are the western imperialists, AQ and Israel on ? It looks remarakably like the same one .

 

[Casually Red]

It strikes me that the regime have a whole-nation objective, they consider themselves patriots, not just Alawite 'sect' members and a few friends of the family who calculate they will have more Mercedes if they continue to "cling to power". They are looking to win the country back. In my opinion, this is their right as a sovereign state. For that part, I wish em luck.

that goes back to the point i was making about this having the potential to radicalise a Syrian government in the long term . This is an existential threat not just to the Baath party and Assad , to numerous national minorities ..christian, shia, alawite, druze, to communists and socialists, ..to the broad mass of moderate and secular sunnis...such as that kid who didnt show enough respect to Allahs name and got executed in front of his parents for an everyday phrase...it goes beyond those sectional concerns into what constitutes an actual collective nation . And that nation itself faces a grave existential threat . If Assad was just appealing to a sect of regime loyalists then no matter how much outside help his head would have been on a barbecue a long time ago .

Instead he seems to have inspired enough confidence amongst disparate sections of the population to band together and fight for a common goal . And that is a progressive form of patriotism, an anti imperialist and secular nationalism . I believe that if they succeed that type of politics is going to be the common discourse and more aggressively stated and asserted in the reform of a rebuilt Syria .
The political forces that will be propping up any national governemnt will be the most patriotic , secular and radical . And those forces will be very strongly intertwined after this is over . The communist party in particular .

Nasrallah was analysing this very stuff in a speech a while back, taking the classic guerrilla view of turning disadvantages into advantages . On the other hand that prospect will make the west and their allies even more determined to win .

 

[yield]

Right, but some here would like that to be forgotten & push the idea that this rebellion is a plot by Western imperialists & Israel in cahoots with AQ.

Long-ish article by Patrick Cockburn up at the LRB, mostly setting out the shape of the regional context as the war spreads: http://www.lrb.co.uk/2013/05/23/patrick-cockburn/is-it-the-end-of-sykes-picot

Moaz al-Khatib, the outgoing president of the Syrian National Coalition, which supposedly represents the opposition, recently resigned, declaring as he did so that the group was controlled by outside powers – i.e. Saudi Arabia and Qatar. ‘The people inside Syria,’ he said, ‘have lost the ability to decide their own fate. I have become only a means to sign some papers while hands from different parties want to decide on behalf of the Syrians.’ He claimed that on one occasion a rebel unit failed to go to the rescue of villagers being massacred by government forces because they hadn’t received instructions from their paymasters.

The pro-democracy movement died out ages ago TomUS. This is about regime change. Have you forgotten Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan?

 

[Casually Red]

The pro-democracy movement died out ages ago TomUS. This is about regime change. Have you forgotten Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan?

has he hell forgotten, hes still celebrating

 

[TomUS]

This is about regime change. Have you forgotten Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan?

Some regimes need changing. The Syrian one does. And Iraq & Afghan were/are disasters & I liked the way Libya was done & it could turn out OK.

 

[Pickman's model]

Some regimes need changing. The Syrian one does. And Iraq & Afghan were/are disasters & I liked the way Libya was done & it could turn out OK.

How would you suggest the war-mongering murderous regime in the united states is changed? Elections have been tried but they seem to be of doubtful quality.

 

[Pickman's model]

TomUS you say you liked the way libya was done. I suppose you were particularly er 'excited' by the footage of gadaffi's last few minutes. Could you expand on what you most liked about that?

 

[TomUS]

How would you suggest the war-mongering murderous regime in the united states is changed? Elections have been tried but they seem to be of doubtful quality.

Elections had some value. The Repubs lost the White House twice & Obama hasn't started any new major wars.

How would you suggest the UK government be changed?......or the Syrian government.....Oh but you like Assad I guess.

 

[DotCommunist]

useless cockwipe

 

[Pickman's model]

Elections had some value. The Repubs lost the White House twice & Obama hasn't started any new major wars.

How would you suggest the UK government be changed?......or the Syrian government.....Oh but you like Assad I guess.

Same old same old. Pity you've yet to engage brain before posting.

 

[protesticals]

Oh Dear an Obama worshiper.

 

[TomUS]

Oh Dear an Obama worshiper.

Actually, quite disappointed in him, but far better than McCain or Romney.

 

[protesticals]

Actually, quite disappointed in him, but far better than McCain or Romney.

Such a massive difference..not

 

[J Ed]

Some regimes need changing.

You just don't get how this imperialism thing works, do you?

Compared to the US and UK number 1 ally Saudi Arabia, Syria was a paradise for its citizens. Or at least that was the case before the Saudis, Qataris, Al-Qaeda with NATO backing escalated unrest there.

When will the regime in Saudi Arabia be changed? When the people of Bahrain rose up against the Bahrain monarchy and the Saudis had to intervene why didn't NATO invade and back the people calling for democracy?

While promoting regime change in Libya, Cameron was selling arms to the Saudis and Bahrain militaries, the latter military is full of foreigners to ensure that they aren't that bothered about killing off the people of that country.

Edit -

I don't even know why I'm bothering to explain very basic facts over the past couple of years to someone who can back the war on terror against Al-Qaeda for over a decade and then can swallow the NATO lie that fighting on their behalf is now the right thing to be doing. How can anyone swallow it? Judging by opinion polls, despite saturated pro-rebel media propaganda on the BBC and in all the newspapers, most people are smart enough not to.

 

[Pickman's model]

Actually, quite disappointed in him, but far better than McCain or Romney.

one thing you can't fault mccain on is his oven chips which he devised while a prisoner at the hanoi hilton

 

[goldenecitrone]

You just don't get how this imperialism thing works, do you?

Compared to the US and UK number 1 ally Saudi Arabia, Syria was a paradise for its citizens. Or at least that was the case before the Saudis, Qataris, Al-Qaeda with NATO backing escalated unrest there.

Such a paradise that hundreds of thousands of people were out on the streets risking torture and violent death at the hands of Assad's goons.

 

[Pickman's model]

Such a paradise that hundreds of thousands of people were out on the streets risking torture and violent death at the hands of Assad's goons.

you don't understand the notion of comparison do you?

 

[J Ed]

Anyone who thinks that the lived experience of a woman, or anyone outside of the wealthy minority, in Saudi Arabia is superior to that of a woman in pre-Civil War Syria is an idiot.

FFS, NATO's #1 Middle-Eastern ally still executes people for being witches. When's the regime change to save the Saudis from themselves coming?

 

[Pickman's model]

Anyone who thinks that the lived experience of a woman, or anyone outside of the wealthy minority, in Saudi Arabia is superior to that of a woman in pre-Civil War Syria is an idiot.

FFS, NATO's #1 Middle-Eastern ally still executes people for being witches. When's the regime change to save the Saudis from themselves coming?

i didn't know islam recognised witches

 

[Delroy Booth]

No-one disputes that what Assad did was turn a pro-democracy movement into a sectarian bloodbath, by conscious choice, using death squads and by shelling places, copying what his dad did in the early 80's. It's backfired really badly too, look what fucking happened as a result. A pro-democracy movement broken up by Assad's goons, which triggered a sectarian war, before ending up as an out of control proxy war between all the great powers that's going to tear the whole middle-east to bits, something that poses much greater danger to the Syrian regime than some group of demonstrators ever could. They badly miscalculated the whole thing from the start.

It shows that the case for "humanitarian intervention" is based on some hypocritical pseudo-righteous vengence logic, to punish Assad for his treatement of the pro-democracy demonstrators. It's strange and revealing how TomUS and the other warmongers are so concerned about the plight of the Syrians when they're victims of Assad's goons, yet they seem to be far less concerned with the blood-chilling consequences that regime change would have for Syrian people. At this point the removal of Assad would trigger the collapse of the Syrian state, which would lead to a power vacuum and bloodletting on a horrible scale, and at that point where does it stop? Think about what's going to happen if we end up in a situation where you'd have Russian backed proxy militia's fighting with Western backed proxy militia's with tens of thousands of al-queada militia's backed from the gulf, and countless hundreds of criminal gangs who go round looting and so on. It's going to look like Afghanistan was from 89-94, who knows maybe worse. And btw this is a fairly accurate description of what Libya is like at the moment - armed gangs fighting it out, a western backed puppet government restricted to a small quarter of Tripoli with no legitimacy, unemployment and living standards in freefall. Don't hold Libya up as some sort of ideal for what these things can be like, not only is it far from a success story it's also a story which has years to play out. We'll see just how Libya gets on over the next few years.

I don't think even the United States and Israel want this state of events that would lead to the breakup of the Syrian state to play out, infact this has already been mentioned in regards to the G8. I think they'd prefer some kind of arrangement that see's Assad go, maybe to the Alawite coast, but the Syrian state and it's institutions remain, at least in Damascus and Aleppo and the major cities, with a ceasefire of some kind in place, a peace of mutual exhaustion that's temporary and fragile. Of course, it wouldn't end the war, it'd grind on anyway over a period of years, but I think they'd be ready to settle for this short of full regime change - with a Syria that's crippled and a unable to help out Iran. I also think that Iran might be brought back under control, because the pressure they're under is pretty immense and there's not much Russia can do about it short of starting WW3, which they aren't going to do.

 

[goldenecitrone]

Anyone who thinks that the lived experience of a woman, or anyone outside of the wealthy minority, in Saudi Arabia is superior to that of a woman in pre-Civil War Syria is an idiot.

FFS, NATO's #1 Middle-Eastern ally still executes people for being witches. When's the regime change to save the Saudis from themselves coming?

Great comparison. The Saudis live under a shit regime, so the Syrians should shut the fuck up and appreciate how great life was under Assad. You should have told them two years ago. They might have stopped protesting and this whole thing could have been avoided.

 

[Pickman's model]

Great comparison. The Saudis live under a shit regime, so the Syrians should shut the fuck up and appreciate how great life was under Assad. You should have told them two years ago. They might have stopped protesting and this whole thing could have been avoided.

no, i think you'd have found a different reason for posting shit. 'this whole thing' would just have happened on a different thread.

 

[J Ed]

Great comparison. The Saudis live under a shit regime, so the Syrians should shut the fuck up and appreciate how great life was under Assad. You should have told them two years ago. They might have stopped protesting and this whole thing could have been avoided.

No one is saying that though, are they? No one here is an Assad supporter or believes that Syrian Baathism is a good way in which to run a country. It's just obvious what sort of intentions NATO has when NATO simultaneously arms a rebellious majority (majority here is questionable in the case of Syria) claiming to fight for democracy in some countries while arming the Saudi and Bahrain militaries while they crush their own pro-democracy protesters.

 

[Pickman's model]

i'm disappointed that france, the former colonial power. has not been taking a more active role in trying to restore peace to syria

 

[goldenecitrone]

No one is saying that though, are they? No one here is an Assad supporter or believes that Syrian Baathism is a good way in which to run a country. It's just obvious what sort of intentions NATO has when NATO simultaneously arms a rebellious majority (majority here is questionable in the case of Syria) claiming to fight for democracy in some countries while arming the Saudi and Bahrain militaries while they crush their own pro-democracy protesters.

I agree. Massive hypocrites. Fuelling the crisis. The only way out is a political solution that persuades the Russians to drop Assad. Arming everyone is just making things worse.