Wonderful thoughtful analysis and a great read. Thank you so much!
Except it wasn’t as the ruling family/party are neither, but Alawi. You’re conflating the civil war with what has happened because of Iranian, ISIL and al Qaeda involvement. The overwhelming majority of Syrians are Sunni. The Iranian involvement is the only thing, really, that it makes it otherwise.
Hardly. What all this shows is that we should have stayed home. We need to gradually disengage from the Muslim world. We have no allies there (ME and S. and C Asia) nor anyone we should ally with. We do not share common cultures, religious sensibilities (though this should never have anything to do with foreign policy) or concepts of how one should govern.
@jeffrey: Thanks! I still think that Saudi Arabia’s backing of virulently toxic barbaric Wahabbi Sunni interests is driving much of terrorism and jihadi terrorism in the world. They are killing Shia in Yemen, in Bahrain, in Syria, in Pakistan and elsewhere. We are an unabashedly Wahabbi sunni-supporting state when it comes to our foreign policy.
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Agreed. But not because we’ve “picked sides.” It’s just that those pesky Saudis grow so much broccoli, I mean have so much oil (that we don’t really need anymore).
The emergence of LED lighting and solar power is going to wipe out a huge chunk of the oil and gas needed for lighting. Home refrigeration and heating is the only thing that need high voltage electricity or oil/gas.
Exactly… How the outcome effects Isreal… and Saudi Arabia too…is the only lens that sees US policy as a failure in Syria… A lens that focuses on Americas needs would see our policy as very prudent…
Me, I don’t see The Shia as haveing any less a right to stand up and fight as anyone else… I don’t see Isreal, The Sunni states or the Shia states as haveing lock on morality… I don’t believe any of them deserve a victory over the others… But most of the time…the media does not share these priors… They hold Isreal as morally superior… and therefore they believe Israel is deserving of us wiping out or weakening the Shia for them… Else we have failed…
The Obama administration policies did not “fail” America. They have severed America very well. His policies limited our exposure to a hopeless goal, a goal imposed on us by the right and tradition…
Obama’s policy did fail to advance Isreal’s goals… and that is the sole justification for declaring America’s Syrian policy a failure…
The way Isreal’s well-being is continually presented as synonymous with America’s wellbeing by most of the American press is downright Orwellian…
I am always surprised when Americans comment on the Iraq war and focus on the the number of deaths(4,486) and the number of non-fatal casualties (official count 32,021) of American troops and fail to mention the documented civilian deaths in Iraq, estimated to be over 170,000, plus an additional 70,000 Iraqi combatants. https://www.iraqbodycount.org/ and https://antiwar.com/casualties/. When one considers the fact that the US invaded Iraq in an imperial quest for oil and a petty desire for revenge after Bush I’s invasion during the first Gulf War but which was deceitfully presented to the American people as revenge for Iraq’s supposed role in 9/11 (completely debunked) and its nuclear weapons buildup (no evidence whatsoever), it is a complete mystery why Bush II, Cheney, and their advisors have not been tried for war crimes. We should of course add to this the enormous cost of the war (approximately $2 Trillion) currently being borne by US taxpayers, and the resultant inability of our government to provide adequate services to the American people, as well as the daily horror under which Iraqi citizens now must live. But what is also little discussed is that ISIS was founded by the 250,000 members of the Iraqi military who found themselves on the streets after Bush II and Bremer disbanded the Iraqi army in May 2003. http://time.com/3900753/isis-iraq-syria-army-united-states-military/ So not only do we bear the burden of a continuing series of national security and foreign policy failures in the middle east, of which the Iraq war is only one egregious part, but also the direct cause of the brutally violent civil wars in Libya, Syria, and the ISIS led and inspired terror attacks in Europe, Turkey, Egypt, and elsewhere.
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In reading your comment, I was struck by two related realizations. In granting the Jews a homeland in the Middle East as compensation for the holocaust and without consideration for the impact this unfair displacement would cause to Palestinians living in the area, the British, the US, and their allies have burdened all succeeding generations with a destruction of a way of life as it could have been lived without terror. It has poisoned the world and everyone in it pays a price. If a homeland were to be granted, it should have been carved out of German soil. Second, AIPAC and other Jewish defenders of the Israeli homeland have created, by direct manipulation, a political base of fundamentalist Christian supporters of Israel which continues to distort the American political system and which has led directly to the creation of our current oligarchy and the election of our current President.
Except it wasn’t as the ruling family/party are neither, but Alawi.
Just to be clear, the Alawites are a Shia sect. Here is a good article on the ethnic and religious makeup of the Syrian population. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-16108755
I never before responded to a comment made in response to another comment I made a month earlier but so important, troubling and truthful are your observations, I am compelled.
The decision by Truman to support the establishment of the State of Israel, was by Truman’s own admission the most difficult decision he ever made, even more difficult the decision to drop the A-bomb on Japan. The decision put Truman at odds with his most trusted and respected advisor and at the time his Secretary of State, General George Marshall who almost resigned over Truman’s decision. (“Mr. President, a man does not resign because a president who’s job it is to make decisions, made one.”) I agree with Marshall in that at this time we cannot question that decision.
But in regard to where that decision puts us, thanks to Jimmy Carter, who started the process at Camp David of bringing peace and acceptance of Israel to its neighbors, I still believe peace is possible. In fact, had Yasser Arafat at Camp David in 2000 made the same decision as two other terrorists, Sadat and Begin in 1979, to be a statesman first and a terrorist second, we would already have peace.
But the problem today is that Israeli right wing politicians are exploiting divisions in America to dictate American foreign policy and spend American blood and other treasures instead of doing what is necessary to make a peace that will allow the world to go forward. That is I believe that peace is possible but not until the politics, at this time mostly on the side of Israel but even if Israel was willing, would be on the other side, to except where we are today and make peace.
I mean I agree that the Muslims, as you so rightly pointed out are the aggrieved party. Just read about the actions of the most religious Ottoman Sultan Bayazied II in regard to the Spanish Inquisition to understand just how aggrieved. The historic not only tolerance but protection of Jewish minorities throughout the Islamic world from the Muslims of Spain to the great Jewish hero Saladin to the Ottomans is the only reason why in 1946 there was still one place in the world with enough Jews for a Jewish homeland and in my view is the most important aspect to remember when discussing the current state of Israel and its relations with its neighbors. But the situation today is as it is and to undue it would be a humanitarian disaster that would make the Holocaust pale in comparison. Therefore, it is necessary to stop demonizing Islam and through flattery and whatever else it will take to get the Muslim world to accept as a price for it tolerance one of the great injustices of history least an even greater injustice, the destruction of Israel today, will result.
“George W Bush lied America into the disastrous war in Iraq”, Donald Trump at a GOP primary debate 2-13-2016.
Over 1,000,000 Muslims are dead today because of Bush’s lie. So if you believe Donald Trump, Bush and his supporters are the greatest war criminals since Adolph Hitler. Yet almost all those who supported and voted for Bush also support Trump. This is most troubling because these people are either too dumb to realize or to evil to care that Trump is calling them the greatest war criminals since Hitler.
The point America is all in to demonizing Islam for a small percent doing really terrible stuff but ignoring that what America did was in scope many times worse. As Ron Paul put it when he destroyed Rudy of 911, this blowback of the destruction of civilization and order resulting in over 1,000,000 dead Muslims to placate the ego of a boy president was not only predictable, but predicted.
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I for one think that NOT having body bags of dead Americans arriving in Dover Delaware from participation in the Syria Civil War was a success, not a failure. Talk about a quagmire with the potential of sonic speed mission creep. The Sunni Shia conflict is centuries old and mixed with the culture of revenge that the Machiavelli politics that the middle east brews up it is high time one of our leaders said “enough”. Could it have been couched better, you bet, but hindsight is the luxury of the pundits, especially ones that cannot remove their own native biases and personal religion from their analaysis. Even if Obama committed thousands of ground forces our involvement would have only put a lid on this caldron and it would have boiled over again once we left. Iraq is doing so well after our involvement there.
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I will repeat the often stated choice in front of the Israeli people. They can choose if they want the future of their nation to be a liberal democracy, a Jewish state and a larger state, but it cannot be all three. They must choose which two of those they want for their future. I firmly believe that if they opt for large, it has a high probability of eventually bringing about the demise of Israel. The Israelis I know understand this, but they are narrowly on the losing side of the political process in Israel. Thomas Friedman has an oped piece in the NYT today that is worth reading, but I disagree with his premise that this is the US’s or US President’s decision. It is up to Israelis.
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Most Palestinians are Sunnis.
Thanks. I thought that most of Israel’s neighbors except Egypt (a big one) were generally shia or non-wahabbi sunni. I based that on the constant animosity and belligerence between Israel and Iran. Clearly I am wrong.
Sunnis rep the dominant majority of the global Muslim population, about 90% of Muslims are Sunnis and only 10% Shias, and of that small 10% minority they mostly live in just four countries. Iran, Pakistan, India and Iraq. Only in Iran and Iraq are Shias the religious majority over their Sunni brethren.
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I share that sentiment
I agree but not sure I share your optimism regarding the Trump administration. If they do support education and historic renovation, I will be pleasantly surprised/shocked. Just because I don’t think they take an intellectual, long-term view of such aid.