You Wake Up This Morning

[dyn]

I wonder what would happen if we locked snyprrr and Sean in the same room for a few hours.

[drogulus]

Pure, unreconstructed horseshit, the fantasy of a liberal imperialist.  At least be able to admit what you really are. 

I never offered pretense here: Kagame and the horrors in the Congo - 5 million+ dead as compared to the paltry 100K or so dead in Syria - is not my problem.  Nor is Syria.  The US not retreating from permanent war footing is my problem, and that's the problem that needs to be addressed.  The putrid moral justifications for war are also my problem.  They are all false.

     It's pretense if you only care about what happens in the Congo to prevent action against Syria. If you care about the Congo for real what do you want to do about it? C'mon, show me how an anti-imperialist thinks when he's forced to.

     

"The US not retreating from permanent war footing is my problem, and that's the problem that needs to be addressed."

     We'll see if Iran can be deterred short of war. It's a big maybe as it stands now. As for Syria, they violated a century old prohibition against using WMD, the original WMD as it happens.

[ibanezmonster]

I wonder what would happen if we locked snyprrr and Sean in the same room for a few hours.

They might merge into this one guy I had the displeasure of talking to in real life. Apparently, Obama is capable of bending the laws of nature by being fascist and Communist at the same time. Probably this would happen only in the sense of being far out, though.

Another possibility is that the conspiracy theory aspect might merge them into Rob Newman...

[Todd]

It's pretense if you only care about what happens in the Congo to prevent action against Syria. If you care about the Congo for real what do you want to do about it? C'mon, show me how an anti-imperialist thinks when he's forced to.

Looks like you missed the original point.  Pelosi was blabbing about "never again," and Kerry referred to the Nazis as well.  (The Nazis are always such good go-to villains.)  But genocide occurred in Rwanda while the US debated whether it was really genocide.  Perhaps the dark skin prevented American leaders from grasping what was happening.  I guess old Slick Willy's lament that he should have done more is good enough.  Then things got even worse as the violence spread west.

I'm not terribly concerned about what happens in Congo.  There really isn't much of a strategic interest there - Egypt and Nigeria are where the US has strategic interests in Africa. 

For those who care about the Congo, the first thing to do to reduce fighting is to control Kagame's actions, presumably with financial aid, or more properly, bribes.  The violence in the east must be reduced before political stability in the west can be achieved.  But Congo is, if anything, even more complex than Syria, so that would require more meddling, which the US has been doing all along.   

We'll see if Iran can be deterred short of war. It's a big maybe as it stands now. As for Syria, they violated a century old prohibition against using WMD, the original WMD as it happens.

The original WMD?  Really?  What about biological warfare?  You know, Romans and Middle Age warriors catapulting dead bodies over fortified walls, the US military giving smallpox infested blankets to Indians, and so on.  But gas has some special hold on you, it looks like.  So what if gas was used?  WMD that pose no strategic threat to the US is a hollow argument for a new war.

What is the strategic interest in Syria?  To say it is to deter Iran is rather silly.  The US can drain Iranian resources, in concert with Arab countries, by funding and arming Assad's opponents.  It would be cheaper, and while there would be atrocities, that's better than the US directly engaging in war. 

Of course, your post also contains a rather troubling assumption: Iran should not get the bomb because Uncle Sam says so.  Excuse me, because the international community says so.  I've written before, and I'll write again, that I can live with a nuclear Iran.  Nothing I have read indicates that they are any less rational or more warlike than American leaders.

[drogulus]

     The former German Ambassador to the U.S. Wolfgang Ischinger has an interesting take on the parallel between Syria and the crisis in Bosnia. He thinks that is a better comparison than with Iraq or Afghanistan.

     Syrian Hell

     Why we must not forget the lessons from Bosnia

[Todd]

The former German Ambassador to the U.S. Wolfgang Ischinger has an interesting take on the parallel between Syria and the crisis in Bosnia. He thinks that is a better comparison than with Iraq or Afghanistan.

So what? 

I will say that I find the conclusion most enjoyable:

The West appears to look at Syria, as it did Bosnia 20 years ago, as a problem from hell that we should stay far away from. Should this be our final lesson from the Syrian crisis, it would be a step backward for the capacity of the international community to secure peace though the United Nations. For the West, it would be more than that. It would be a declaration of bankruptcy, both moral and political.


Rubbish.  This is precisely the type of lame "moral" argument for war that must be resisted.

[drogulus]

     

"The US can drain Iranian resources, in concert with Arab countries, by funding and arming Assad's opponents.  It would be cheaper, and while there would be atrocities, that's better than the US directly engaging in war."

      We can and should do all of that. We also should turn over a new leaf by taking the advice of Liberal Imperialist-in-Chief Paul Berman by sending lawyers, guns and money to our friends, instead of just complaining about how weak the liberal faction always is. We should "cheat" like we did after WWII in Europe and support the faction we want to win.

[Todd]

We should "cheat" like we did after WWII in Europe and support the faction we want to win.

A totally worthless argument.  People really must stop referring to WWII when discussing any potential war we face today.  The stakes are peanuts in comparison.  The Nazis are gone.  Give it a rest.

Beyond that, pray tell, which faction do we want to win?  There are no good factions.  Assad is a monster.  His enemies are monsters.  Better to pursue a policy of permanent instability in Syria in my view.  Best of all would be to stay out, and do much less than we are doing now.

[drogulus]

 
    You didn't understand my reference to our campaign in Europe after WWII. Hitler was gone, Stalin was not, so we supported anti-Communist factions in Germany, France, Italy and Greece. In Greece it was a shooting war. It was the most successful covert (sort of) operation in history.

     We're making a mistake by assuming that the current weakness of liberals in Syria represents a permanent condition. It's more like a self fulfilling prophecy: We don't help them, they stay weak so we don't help them and so it goes. I don't think they will win if we help, but we should help them so they can win the next time. Our commitment to democracy ought to take some tangible form.

[drogulus]

I wonder what would happen if we locked snyprrr and Sean in the same room for a few hours.

     Peace in our time?

     Oh, I just read on my news page that drones won't play much of a part in the Syrian mission because the Syrians have what is called an integrated air defense system (true) which will render drones vulnerable to being shot down (somewhat true). That is why the first stage of the operation will be to attack the air defense system. A better reason why drones won't be a big deal is that they don't carry big payloads.

[Parsifal]

     Peace in our time?

     Oh, I just read on my news page that drones won't play much of a part in the Syrian mission because the Syrians have what is called an integrated air defense system (true) which will render drones vulnerable to being shot down (somewhat true). That is why the first stage of the operation will be to attack the air defense system. A better reason why drones won't be a big deal is that they don't carry big payloads.

Drones are not for war, they are for cold-blooded murder.

I don't think the rebels are any better than Assad.  Substantial stocks of chemical and biological weapons held by the regime is the main concern.  If there is any possibility of destroying those stocks, it might be a worth-while effort.  Otherwise I see no advantage in tipping the civil war in either direction.  Perhaps an agreement with Russia can be reached that we back off our strike and they cut off support to Assad.

[Todd]

You didn't understand my reference to our campaign in Europe after WWII. Hitler was gone, Stalin was not

Sorry about that, try this: A totally worthless argument.  People really must stop referring to post-WWII Europe when discussing any potential war we face today.  The stakes are peanuts in comparison.  The Soviet Union is gone.  Give it a rest.

We're making a mistake by assuming that the current weakness of liberals in Syria represents a permanent condition.

Who are the (little l) liberals in Syria?

Our commitment to democracy ought to take some tangible form.

Let's start with lawful use of military force and more respect for the Constitution.  The US cannot be a beacon for democracy if it continually expands police powers over its own population. 

[Brian]

I think this has become such a huge national argument because it's a battle over America's foreign policy soul. Who are we going to be?

Theodore Roosevelt sort of set up this idea that America could be our hemisphere's "policeman," meddling in the affairs of Latin America whenever we needed (or "needed") to: stopping Britain and Germany from invading Venezuela, kick-starting Panama, etc. At some point along the line - 1917? the Cold War white papers in '46-'50? - we decided that this extended to the rest of the world.

It's a policy of noble intentions, I guess, if you don't call bullshit on those intentions. We spared Venezuela from getting re-colonized; we saved South Korea; we brought about better outcomes in the Balkans. Even if you believe these are good-hearted acts, they have a happy double effect: we make the world a better place and we also make the world more dependent on us, more in need of us.

On the other hand, this rarely actually works. We didn't take down Kim Il-sung. We didn't intervene in Rwanda. We didn't fix Somalia. Vietnam happened. Afghanistan happened. Iraq happened. We'd better have noble intentions because if it's all about us being the best, we've basically failed.

So what Syria is really about, is - there are civilians suffering and dying and wishing we would come save them, but is that the kind of country we should be? Should we keep playing Global Cop and saving everybody and spending our billions and blood on the rest of the world's problems? Should we do that, but more selectively, and Iraq has blinded us to what causes are worthy and what causes aren't? Or should we step out of the phone booth and let somebody else play Superman for a change?

[Todd]

Should we keep playing Global Cop and saving everybody and spending our billions and blood on the rest of the world's problems? Should we do that, but more selectively, and Iraq has blinded us to what causes are worthy and what causes aren't? Or should we step out of the phone booth and let somebody else play Superman for a change?

US foreign policy has been more sinister than being global cop, at least since the end of the Cold War; the US has acted as global hegemon, pursuing policies to expand its economic and political influence.  (Promotion of democracy is propaganda, though if it does happen, that's a side benefit.)  There has been nothing well intentioned about it.  It is possible to argue that when the US pushed for establishing the initial post-war order - Bretton Woods and the UN - it did so with the overriding goals of preventing great power war, which is an unabashedly good thing, and expanding markets for US economic interests, which can be viewed as more mixed.  It was an imperfect realization of what American internationalists had sought for decades.  But manufactured fear of commies, a role now filled by terrorists, led to series of questionable policy decisions, including expanding Kennan's concept of containment to a global crusade.  (One can also say that the US requiring the dollar to act as the reserve currency also both revealed true US intentions and set the US up for hard choices later on.)

The US must, in my view, pursue the types of goals advocated by internationalists of days gone by, but with far less emphasis on using military force.  War is almost always much worse than the problems it addresses, and it never ends simply with a satisfactory outcome.  The US must work with and through international organizations, and must work on being part to at least some international treaties, at least as it pertains to strategic matters.  The existing order can be used, or a new one put in place, it really doesn't matter, except that it is very hard to set up new global orders, even populated by toothless organizations. 

But this will be hard, for a variety of reasons.  One of them is the continuing reliance on the military as an engine of economic growth.  Large numbers of jobs rely on the military.  Scientific research and funding relies to a great extent on the military.  Much of what the US and the world takes for granted now is the direct result of US military R&D.  We are addicted to it, as we are addicted to oil, our (rightly) primary strategic concern.  And while it is nice enough to say one wants a strong military and will only use it judiciously and justly, that is highly unlikely.  Hammers need nails.  It was and is possible to argue that the Cold War was an existential struggle.  That is no longer possible.  The US faces no foe that can destroy it and the global order.  It is time to reduce reliance on the military, to reduce its size, to resort less to warfare.  The US needs to strive to become a more normal nation in terms of international affairs.

There will be no Global Cop, or Superman, or whatever, if the US reduces its commitment to military force.  The world would revert to either a multi-polar world, or an apolar world.   Either would be preferable to the "unipolar" world some American policymakers like to pretend we live in.

[Todd]

So what Syria is really about

Iran.

[Brian]

There's a NY Times op-ed today about Syria, by Alex de Waal and Bridget Conley-Zilkic. It's worth reading in full, but if you don't subscribe or don't like clicking links, here are highlights:

- - -

A century and a half ago, the British journalist, lawyer and parliamentarian Sir William Harcourt faced down a public clamor for Britain to intervene in the American Civil War. Writing under the pen name "Historicus" in The Times of London, Sir William argued that military intervention was like revolution: "a high and summary procedure which may sometimes snatch a remedy beyond the reach of law," but "its essence is illegality and its justification is its success." [emphasis added. ~ B]

The proponents of airstrikes against Syria invoke NATO's Operation Deliberate Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995 to argue that a limited bombing campaign can end massacres and civil wars. But that isn't the lesson. The NATO raids didn't end the atrocities, most of which — with the important exception of Srebrenica — had been perpetrated several years earlier. The air attacks were carried out in the same month as a ground offensive by allied Bosnian and Croatian armies, and helped American diplomatic efforts achieve a peace agreement; it was the combination that proved effective.

Syria is not Rwanda in 1994, abandoned by the world to week after week of systematic murder. The war is inflamed by multiple actors, with multiple agendas, backing up all sides. There is too much external intervention — not a void.

What's missing is a political effort to seek peace. No talks are scheduled. The regional power brokers — Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which support the rebels, and Iran, which backs Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad — are at odds. American military action without a peace process involving all actors would only intensify the two-year-old war. ...

Chemical weapons shock the world's conscience. Outrage will not dissipate, regardless of the slow pace of diplomacy. So far, international intervention has come in the form of arming all sides (and the rebels often seem as ready to turn their guns on one another as on the regime). The result is a conflict with a seemingly infinite capacity to metastasize.

An American assault on Syria would be an act of desperation with incalculable consequences. To borrow once more from Sir William: "We are asked to go we know not whither, in order to do we know not what."

[Brian]

But manufactured fear of commies, a role now filled by terrorists, led to series of questionable policy decisions, including expanding Kennan's concept of containment to a global crusade.

This is a really valuable point. America's interventions in countries like Korea and Vietnam weren't spurred by pure good-heartedness but by Communism and containment/dominoes. And now our politicians, military, industrial lobby, and whomever else it suits have replaced Communists with terrorists. More Americans die every year, worldwide, from kayaking accidents than from terrorism. Terrorists' primary purpose, now, though they don't know it, is to prop up our military complex and motivate our move to a police state. Of course, you say essentially the same thing later on in your post...

But this will be hard, for a variety of reasons.  One of them is the continuing reliance on the military as an engine of economic growth.  Large numbers of jobs rely on the military.  Scientific research and funding relies to a great extent on the military.  Much of what the US and the world takes for granted now is the direct result of US military R&D.  We are addicted to it, as we are addicted to oil, our (rightly) primary strategic concern.  And while it is nice enough to say one wants a strong military and will only use it judiciously and justly, that is highly unlikely.  Hammers need nails.  It was and is possible to argue that the Cold War was an existential struggle.  That is no longer possible.  The US faces no foe that can destroy it and the global order.

- - -

The US must, in my view, pursue the types of goals advocated by internationalists of days gone by, but with far less emphasis on using military force.  War is almost always much worse than the problems it addresses, and it never ends simply with a satisfactory outcome.  The US must work with and through international organizations, and must work on being part to at least some international treaties, at least as it pertains to strategic matters.

In other words, we should achieve peacekeeping via peacekeeping and mediation. There's a fairly well-argued, if dry, book on the efficacy of UN peacekeeping efforts, and the many ways that multinational peacekeeping could be far more effective with a few simple fixes. It's certainly a better bargain than our military, and might work better too.

I agree that it's high time to draw down our military and get off of our Permanent War nonsense. This does not mean that we will be totally unprepared if another September 11 happens; we will still have a military and it will still be outrageously high-tech. But I'd guess we could retain an armed force that would do the job at much lower cost. The warmongers who think otherwise may well tell us that if we draw down, China and Iran will nuke us, but they assume that countries which don't like us are irrational actors who will attack us for no reason.

[Todd]

There's a NY Times op-ed today about Syria, by Alex de Waal and Bridget Conley-Zilkic. It's worth reading in full, but if you don't subscribe or don't like clicking links, here are highlights:

You left out this valuable passage:

Sir William advised that the only aim of intervention should be peace, and that "to interpose without the means or the intention to carry into effect a permanent pacification is not to intervene, but to intermeddle." Without credible peace negotiations, firing cruise missiles at Syria would be to intermeddle.


I do not see peace as an objective of the use of American military power.  Rather, it looks like someone whispered in Emperor Obama's ear that Assad did something naughty, and now needs to be spanked.  The Peace Prize winning Emperor looks set to act thusly.

[Todd]

In other words, we should achieve peacekeeping via peacekeeping and mediation.

Yes, with a caveat.  The word "Peacekeeping" has always struck me as a Newspeak for "Occupation".  Let's at least be honest in the words we use.  International mediation and enforcement of treaties certainly has its place, and for the US it would primarily take the form of writing checks.  I'm fine with that. 

This does not mean that we will be totally unprepared if another September 11 happens; we will still have a military and it will still be outrageously high-tech. But I'd guess we could retain an armed force that would do the job at much lower cost. The warmongers who think otherwise may well tell us that if we draw down, China and Iran will nuke us, but they assume that countries which don't like us are irrational actors who will attack us for no reason.

We face a broad array of choices as it pertains to military readiness, not a binary choice between Full Spectrum Dominance and military milquetoast.  We can also work with allies to act as an additional deterrent against would be bullies.


(Not for nothing have I selected my last two avatars.)

[Brian]

Yes, with a caveat.  The word "Peacekeeping" has always struck me as a Newspeak for "Occupation".  Let's at least be honest in the words we use.  International mediation and enforcement of treaties certainly has its place, and for the US it would primarily take the form of writing checks.  I'm fine with that. 

I meant it in the sincere, multinational-guys-in-baby-blue-helmets sense of the word. There are flaws in that process, but at least a few of them could be resolved if the US cared (and wrote checks).

(Not for nothing have I selected my last two avatars.)

I'll be honest; I knew Root but I don't recognize this one.