TSR Foreign Affairs Hub

This is what I said before:


Are you blind, trolling or just being stupid (or all of the above)?
Do you support christians getting killed by FSA Salafists who support the government? Ironically, they're killing christians in the name of Islam and democracy.

Then you are condoning those who have been born deformed from white phosphorus. Your stance is pretty clear - as long as we (westerners) kill civilians, ie: "liberating" them, its okay.

Yeah man, real funny guy you. Now for the sake of not having further debate and keep this thread as "foreign affairs", lets call this one off.

Conveniently grouping both the hardline Salafists and the FSA together is nonsense... Bashaar would be proud.

I support those who have taken arms against a regime which has slaughtered them for more than a year.

Not at all. I don't agree with the use of white phosphorus in densely populated civilian areas. My stance is this: I supported the war effort because it rid Iraq of a tyrant and may give the Iraqi people an alternative future to oppression. Things haven't turned out quite as peachy as our governments predicted, and the current state of the country is a shambles, but at least there is hope. Critics and apologists such as yourself will tell us that we were wrong to free people from tyranny, but I can only imagine that they have not the faintest idea of what it would be like to live under a regime like that, even just for a day.

Alternatively, Saddam could have been left in power and his butchery would have continued.

AcvgAMnMne0

If you're going to support the giraffe at least defend him and your argument for supporting him.

Yeah, I'm not buying it. The fact that the Navy issued one particular story at the time asserting that the plane wasn't in Iranian airspace, only for Admiral William J Crowe to admit this wasn't true a few years later is just one example of why the US' excuse for this incident is total nonsense.



Such factors perhaps being wanting to send a message to the regime to finally accept the ceasefire (which they did a few weeks later) as both sides were broke, could no longer afford to buy weaponry and had been stifling oil production and exports for far too long.

Russians shoot down a 747

It's pretty easy for this sort of thing to happen. You honestly think the Americans are going to shoot down and murder that many civilians just to send a message? They could't just as easily hit a military target? Then cover it up which is hardly an easy thing to do given these ships keeps logs. Also none of the men that knew what was going on which would have been a fair few people came clean about it? Things like that don't stay secret. Why would they even need to send a message, the rest of your post explains they could't afford to buy weaponry and were running out of cash. Why did the US need to blow up a civilian airliner?

Looks like we have our response from Turkey. Harsh language will show Assad whose boss. Its worked so well so far....

What would you recommend him to do?

The crew did not follow protocol and the captain was known to be trigger happy and agressive by other US captains in the persian gulf. On the very same day other captains were pleading him to stop going into iranian waters and luring the revolutionary guard gun boats into gun fights. What makes it absolutely disgusting was that they were given medals as soon as they got back to the USA.

It WAS later established that the claim the crew made that the airliner was descending was false and it was actually ascending. This came directly from the ships logs itself! They LIED pure and simple. The US continued to deny that they did anything wrong at the UN and Bush defended the crew.

Sending a message? -> i don't want to get into conspiracy theories, but there was a cover up and it wasn't an innocent mistake/accident.

More than is ever going to be done. Assad should be removed. To leave things as they are is just going to see Syria descend into complete civil war.

Conveniently grouping both the hardline Salafists and the FSA together is nonsense... Bashaar would be proud.

I support those who have taken arms against a regime which has slaughtered them for more than a year.
If you're going to support the giraffe at least defend him and your argument for supporting him.

Soo on to a less serious note. In my junk box just now I found an Email from some Gaddafi relative offering me Gaddafi's millions in exchange for several thousand pounds needed to get the money out the country.

Is it in his interest to remove Assad, economically? If not, I don't think you can blame him for not doing anything other than giving harsh words to Assad. The reason for those harsh word isn't to make Assad listen rather to make Turkey seem like a powerful country in the eyes of Turkish population. Assad is more than aware of Turkey's military capabilities and it's allies.

I was watching his speech today and he has clearly stated that Assad is a dictator and must go. It is in Turkey's interest to have a democratic ally bordering them rather than a violent dictator. It will reduce the probability of violent confrontations along the border, influx of refugees, instability spilling over into Turkey etc.

Nobody likes Assad much. It's disingenuous of you to say that. (but unsurprising from a troll called "Stalin" parroting some nonsense that past it's cell by date when the Hitchens / Cohen / Aaronovitch / Cockburn left wing in bed with the NeoCons nonsense ended up with at least 120,000 dead Iraqi civilians and a broken country topped off by putting the USA into 3$trn of debt and ended up creating another outpost of Iranian influence in the Arab ME) However neither do they like the proposed alternative of western bombing and sanctions and a generously armed fundamentalist militia driving the country into heavily armed chaos and civil war where many more will die over time, and a fundamentalist sharia law being imposed by the muslim brotherhood (y'know, those guys standing by while the army imprison those who led tahir square protests in Egypt) on the populace. Its the devil or the deep blue sea. There are no good choices here. Surely you can see that the GCC are desperate to inflict revenge on the Islamic Republic of Iran for what they did in Iraq post 2003? Syria has become the latest proxy battle for both sides.

In Syria, the borders are porus and the US, UK, Qatar, and rich fundamentalist wahaabi muslims from Saudi Arabia (y'know, that absolute bastion of benign rule and freedom!) are arming jihadists with the objective of turning the place into another Libya with Sharia law and in the process, weakening Iran.

Many on the left, while they don't like people such as Assad, have learned their lesson at this stage and realise that the western / Saudi backed military intervention alternative is usually much worse and that it is not done for any benign reasons such as helping people, but rather to further their own geopolitical and religious ends which will likely result in even more carnage down the line.

I also extend my criticisms to Russia and China who are also intervening- and far more blatantly and openly than the US hiding-behind-friends policy.

I'm not a rabid Assad supporter, I despise the pig, because of his response non-violent protest was unfortunately not sustained and was instead met with shocking violence. It isn't a winning strategy for Syrians to just throw yourself in front of bullets day after day. Assad has caused this situation with his brutality the brutality he meted out to citizens in Syria seeking a representative government, unfortunately the whole show has now been hijacked by some very reactionary forces (the Americans and the GCC). It isn't as simple as either you or ak137 are making out - both Assad and the forces behind these rebels are scum, I am sorry for the genuine protestors whose movement has been highjacked and exploited in this way, but that is what is happening. I am sorrier for the people of Syria who, whichever side they support (and one lie is that the secular government has no support when it is clear that it has) will now suffer years of savage civil war, at the mercy of both sides.. While it's understandable to feel revulsion at Assad junior's brutal tactics, let's not be naive here. There is no guarantee that the slaughter will stop if Assad falls. Firstly, he and his fashionable wife are likely to be strung up from the nearest lamppost and then large-scale revenge slaughter of Allawites and Christians (and anyone else on the "wrong" side) is likely, even more so since it is already taking place.

I was watching his speech today and he has clearly stated that Assad is a dictator and must go. It is in Turkey's interest to have a democratic ally bordering them rather than a violent dictator. It will reduce the probability of violent confrontations along the border, influx of refugees, instability spilling over into Turkey etc.

Is it in his interest to remove Assad, economically? If not, I don't think you can blame him for not doing anything other than giving harsh words to Assad. The reason for those harsh word isn't to make Assad listen rather to make Turkey seem like a powerful country in the eyes of Turkish population. Assad is more than aware of Turkey's military capabilities and it's allies.

Could end u being that way. If it turns into a full civil war Turkey would be better off installing a nice stable friendly state they can trade a lot with. If there is civil war they will have to deal with a refugee problem the same as if they went to war.

Doesn't really matter what he said. Pretty much every western government has said similar ****. Of course his going to say that. What's he going to say? Oh, I don't really give a **** whether Assad is a dictator unless his harming Turkey?

That's political benefits. Economics benefits > political benefits generally. Assad will never dare to fight Turkey. Because he knows he will be crushed pretty quickly.Refugees won't cost as much as a war would. Instability isn't very likely atm.

Leftist principles and interventionism are not mutually exclusive.

Mistakes were made in Iraq, that is undeniable - but having been at the forefront of the mistakes due to the insufficient number of troop patrolling Iraqi streets and 'keeping order', and the disbandment of the Iraqi police which ensued the widespread looting of the country, one would think, or at least hope, that the participants of the intervention would be best placed to ensure that the same chaos be avoided in Syria.

I'm not calling for an Iraq 2.0 in Syria, though, because I don't think there is a need for boots on the ground due to the conflict heading in a fairly positive direction: the toppling of the regime.

Of course I can see the Sunni/Shia proxy war, but I can also see thousands of innocent civilians being systematically butchered by a regime which has shown no mercy - so why should the Saudi-backed FSA show any when it encloses on Damascus and leaves the Assad crime family hanging from lampposts? In an ideal world I'd rather see him humiliated on television in front of the ICC, but realistically the chances of that happening are extremely slim.

We are, as you pointed out, stuck with the devil or face the deep blue sea - but the status quo cannot be sustained indefinitely and will eventually go down the pan when more Sunnis join the cause and terrorism becomes rife.