Middle East Conflict Megathread (Syria, Iraq, Yemen, etc)

[Auze]

Limited strikes against a state sponsor of terror who has developed and utilized WMDs. I don't see the problem.

The Zionists do the same. Minus sponsoring terror (they are the terror), and they might have WMDs also.

You mean the target of the Terror?

[Al-Ismailiyya]

Getting back on track: Israel bombed an Iran base according to NYT. Ofc no one will care as Israel can always do whatever the heck it wants.

Limited strikes against a state sponsor of terror who has developed and utilized WMDs. I don't see the problem.

Which WMDs are you referring to again?

[El-Amin Caliphate]

The Zionists do the same. Minus sponsoring terror (they are the terror), and they might have WMDs also.

You mean the target of the Terror?

No, I meant what I said in my post.

[Fahran]

Pretty sure the links demonstrate that Libya was turned from a country with the highest Human Development Index in Africa, into a hell hole, and considering that Islamists were most certainly involved... As far as your second claim, erm, so why didn't that happen in Iraq? You had a legitimate, democratically-elected government, in Iraq, and then ISIS showed up and took over huge parts of Iraq from said democratically-elected government. The solution to war, rape, and slavery, the one that acts works, tends not to involve the US bombing random countries that pose no real threat to the US.

War does not have a positive impact on human development, regardless of how worthwhile the motivations behind it are. It's the stability that comes after the final lull in violence that decides whether a rebellion or revolution had a positive impact on a nation. In Libya's case, it should have been an improvement. They obtained a democratically elected government and were making dramatic progress in transforming society for the better.

That said, I'll reiterate that Islamist ideology, while present in Libya, isn't the driving force behind the present conflict, certainly not to the extent that it was in Syria. It's primarily a struggle over electoral legitimacy between two governments and a plethora of tribal militias who are settling old feuds. After the uprising against Qaddafi, there was no conceivable way of avoiding this short of keeping Qaddafi in power by force. He wasn't ever going to win the war. That said, I concur. It would have been preferable not to waste the energy, money, or man-power dabbling in Libya's internal squabbles.

France, like Russia, needs to understand that its traditional sphere of influence is going to melt away amid modernity. At the moment, linguistic and economic ties are all that can survive beyond tomorrow.

Oh, the UN issued a strongly worded letter to rapists and murderers. Oh no. The KLA must be so scared of a strongly worded letter. I'm sure that they quaked in their boots, as they sold Serb organs. And in what World was the US not directly responsible? When the Serbs tried to fight, the US bombed Belgrade, their capital, primarily a civilian cities - leaving the Serbs with two "Humanitarian" choices - have their capital city destroyed or have their population in Kosovo - ethnically cleansed. All in the name of "Human Rights". Why don't you ask the Kosovo Serbs what they feel about the US "Humanitarian Intervention" in Kosovo.

The Serbs were not blameless in that brouhaha. As I recall, they were the ones who in many instances initiated the ethnic cleansing. NATO intervention mitigated what would have been a greater humanitarian crisis and managed to effect the partition of Yugoslavia into more viable nation-states throughout the nineties. At some point, population exchanges would have needed to occur in that environment, as lamentable as it is. I actually wouldn't be opposed to something similar in Syria, minus the violence and organ-snatching. A Sunni state, an Alawi state, and a Kurdish state. Or a federal state that better represents such groups.

Multiple pollsters claimed that Clinton would win. It's interesting how all of these claims come right after Assad scores, or just as he's about to score a victory against the insurgents that the US is totally not supporting.

He appears to have scored his most recent victory by deploying chemical weapons and forcing the rebels to abandon their positions. That's the problem. He's done this several times before as well, as much as his supporters may grasp at straws to deny it. Mind you, I'm not in favor of a full-scale intervention. Assad is going to win. However, restraining him is certainly a worthwhile goal.

I do have a problem with imposing a no fly zone, as that was what led to the bombing of Libya, and turning the country with the highest HDI in Africa, into a shithole country.

The civil war in general did that.

Interestingly enough, some of the very same Liberals who cheered for the bombing campaign, suddenly got butthurt at Trump's name calling. Apparently for that lot, it's better to turn a country into a shithole, than to actually call it a shithole.

I've been ambivalent about both conflicts in spite of my more enthusiastic support for the interventions in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and in Somalia. Qaddafi wasn't going to win the civil war. That became apparent soon after his forces were rebelled from several vital rebel strongholds. The no fly-zone just minimized casualties and sped the conflict towards its conclusion. My complaint is that the nation wasn't stabilized by reliable and strong support for the duly elected government.

You support bombing Syria, and then talk about minimizing civilian casualties. Do you really fail to grasp the disconnect?

Bombing a military installation and killing a dozen soldiers to discourage the government from dropping chemical weapons on cities and killing three to four times as many. That's all I've proposed. It's a symbolic gesture more so than anything. Bolstering the strength of forces that Assad will have to compromise with eventually shouldn't prolong the war either.

So it's cool to wipe out countries, as long as their population is less than 300,000? Originally you attempted to argue from a percentile basis. Since I tore that argument to shreds, you're now trying to argue from an absolute basis.

You didn't tear that argument to shreds at all. I mentioned that twenty percent of the population had been uprooted and then mentioned the concrete numbers. In the case of Kosovo, they could be repatriated to a Serbian nation-state across the border. In Syria, the situation is different.

So if X orders the paramilitary to burn someone, and then condemn the burning, is that cool? Is that acceptable? Street brawls happen. And yet, I haven't seen people being burned alive as a result of street brawls, in massive numbers. It's rather hilarious how my entire point is that Human Rights are simply being used as a PR stunt, by everyone, and here you are, doing just that. "It was only 300,000 Serbs, look at all of those Syrians, they're in the millions!"

That wasn't my only argument. Do you have proof that the Ukrainian government ordered a mob to burn ethnic Russians alive? The local police certainly made a strong attempt to prevent the atrocity and did manage to save some people.

The direct UN quote was: “worst humanitarian crisis in the world”

It's a lot more than just 5,000 civilian casualties, as another source that I cited showed that more than 50,000 children die from starvation in Yemen every year. More than 50,000 children.

And not all as a direct result of the Saudi-imposed blockade, which I quite ardently oppose.

Over what time period? Two hundred thousand people dying over 400 years, that's just Moscow's traffic in the 1990s. What's the population? What's the time period? Where did those numbers originate?

Most of those deaths occurred within a ten year period between the late eighties and early nineties. They account for the deaths caused by the Al Anfal genocide and the ethnic cleansing of Marsh Arabs primarily, though political opponents are included in that figure as well.

So none. Gotcha.

War is the continuation of politics by other means.

I've addressed the Human Rights abuses in Syria by proposing to end the war and divide Syria along the Euphrates, giving a substantial amount of land to the Kurds. You're the one who demands we minimize civilian casualties by dropping more bombs. Also, to have the UN call your country's actions the "worst humanitarian crisis in the World" - that takes some Belgian Congo style sadism.

Is it a good thing to have chemical weapons and indiscriminate bombings of civilian centers? Is that conducive to human rights and human development in a country? And, again, starvation is not quite the same situation. I've already explained that Yemen's situation wasn't peachy before the war began. The destruction of infrastructure and the demographic crisis created by the Houthis initiating the war would have thrown Yemen into a state of famine alone. The Saudi actions have merely exacerbated the existing crisis and other avenues remain available for addressing it. With Assad, we've already given him multiple ultimatums that have been ignored.

Hey, I'm all for letting the people in Syria vote for their leadership. I'm all for Referendums. Can we hold one in Ukraine too?

That depends. Are we holding a referendum to partition the country for the benefit of its neighbor, to change leadership, or to grant ethnic minorities increased autonomy? I'm wholly in favor of the last two, but I'm on the fence with the first one at the moment because the logical implications would not bode well for global peace.

[Eol Sha]

Getting back on track: Israel bombed an Iran base according to NYT. Ofc no one will care as Israel can always do whatever the heck it wants.

Limited strikes against a state sponsor of terror who has developed and utilized WMDs. I don't see the problem.

What WMDs has Iran utilized?

[Fahran]

Condemnation's ok. Sanctions - depends on the situation. Bombing humans to promote Human Rights? That's my issue.

It's quite a limited bombing in this instance. By no means do I favor a massive involvement in Syria, especially not when such involvement benefits Islamist groups. I would like to see Assad grant concessions to the more moderate elements of the FSA, to the SDF, and to disenfranchised rural Sunnis though. I'd also prefer that chemical weapons not be used against civilians. The issue is that Assad has such a strong hand at the moment that he has no incentive to bother negotiating with anyone aside from the SDF. He should've allowed elections earlier and this all could've been avoided.

An unwilling population... riiight. Is that why Chechens are returning to Chechnya, because they're unwilling to be ruled by Kadyrov's group?

War is not often conducive to a stable demography. I'm not certain that Chechnya can be reliably maintained as a Russian state in the foreseeable future, though I will grant that Putin managed the situation more deftly than one might have thought. Mind you, Kadyrov is still corrupt and rather nasty in his policies, but he does appear to have made some progress towards stability.

Actually - you're wrong. My main issue with the Baltics is that their Governments are not adhering to the Minority Rights parts of Human Rights treaties that they signed.

I'm not too familiar with the human rights of ethnic minorities in the Baltic region, though I'm aware that Russian had been emphasized as the principal language of the region under the czars and soviets in much the same way that German had prior to that, and often at the expensive of native Baltic languages.

Not sure what Putin's issue is, but I doubt that the Baltics would benefit if Zyuganov or even Medvedev came to power. Central Asia, with the exception of Turkmenistan, is very pro-Russian, and the latter's neutral. It'll be interesting to see if Turkmenistan will sacrifice neutrality to be a part of the new silk road, or enter an era of isolation, but that's for them to decide.

While the Central Asian nations do appear more cordial towards Russia, I believe that the economic strength of China and eventually India might change the power dynamics of the region immensely in the long-term. Hence why Russia would benefit from developing its soft power a bit more. The economy in particular strikes me as problematic, and I'm not certain Putin has done enough to invest in Russia's long-term future. He's popular, but Russia still have a lot of internal problems.

And now we move to Ukraine. Russia can simply forbid any transfer of funds from Russia to Ukraine, cut off all raw materials to Ukraine, and cut off all trade with Ukraine, and watch what that'll do to Ukraine's economy.

That's not exactly soft power either. I'm also not certain such a policy would benefit Russia if the objective was to preserve some measure of influence beyond its borders. Would you agree at least that such influence has been waning since the nineties by and large? Putin has reimposed it to an extent, but that strikes me as a short-term accomplishment that might not persist for the next two to three decades.

What most fail to realize, is that Ukraine is the most corrupt country in Europe. (I don't consider Kosovo a country.) It is the only post Soviet country that failed to upgrade most of its infrastructure from the Soviet Days. It's in a demographic tail spin. When Crimeans were offered to be a part of Russia, they jumped at the opportunity. There are two ways to solve the Ukraine Crisis: through blood, or through Referendums. I'm a fan of the latter.

According to some surveys, Russia and Moldova are running a steep competition for that title. I'm aware that Russia and Ukraine actually experienced decreasing HDI scores in the aftermath of the USSR's disintegration, but other former satellites appear to have prospered. East Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Bulgaria especially have markedly improved since disentangling from Russian hegemony.

Moldova and Ukraine followed the path of Liberalization, how'd that work out? After the fall of the USSR, Ukraine was slightly better off than Belarus; they were equal, but Ukraine had the coastline.

Those represent two examples out of many, and, in many cases, liberalization and autonomy haven't been absolute.

In some region, like the Caucasus, spheres of influence are needed. A war between Armenia and Azerbaijan led to the Invasion of Russia through Dagestan.

The Caucasus, much like the Balkans, is a mess. I mostly blame it on them being nestled between multiple territorial powers and the mountainous terrain keeping centralized states somewhat weak until modern times.

I like how intense this discussion is, and yet neither one of us is actually insulting each other. That's very unique on NSG

I'm glad that you're keeping an open mind, and if I said something that seems personal and was bad - that's my mistake.

Of course. I don't know how to do things any other way. I appreciate your civility as well.

You're fine. Out of curiosity, you're Russian, right? I've always assumed as much, but I've never really bothered to ask. My family has very distant ties to Russia.

[Fahran]

The Zionists do the same. Minus sponsoring terror (they are the terror), and they might have WMDs also.

They do have WMD's. Israel is acting in its own interest in that regard, and, honestly, I don't have much of a problem with it given that most of the countries in the Middle East use them as a boogeyman to distract their people any time their domestic policies fail. Iran's government is pretty blatantly Antisemitic as well.

[Mujahidah]

The Zionists do the same. Minus sponsoring terror (they are the terror), and they might have WMDs also.

You mean the target of the Terror?

Nope, the perpetrators

[Auze]

You mean the target of the Terror?

Nope, the perpetrators

I see it counts the casualties Palestine got for Second Intifada as Israel perpetrated.

[Salus Maior]

You mean the target of the Terror?

Nope, the perpetrators

To be fair, the losing side tends to have the most casualties in war.

[Washington Resistance Army]

Nope, the perpetrators

To be fair, the losing side tends to have the most casualties in war.

Unless you're the USSR of course

But yeah in all seriousness fuck Israel.

[MERIZoC]

Nope, the perpetrators

To be fair, the losing side tends to have the most casualties in war.

There is no war, any more than the oppression and murder of Africans under apartheod was a war.

[Socialist Czechia]

Interesting how Western medias ignore genocide and using of white phosphorus against children in Yemen.

When I see pictures from alleged chemical attack in Syria, I don't see much, only coughing and dirty people, and that could be anything.

But children burnt to crisp and alive and looking like ghouls, can be hardly be faked.
But is Riyad bombed? Are Wahhabist companies under international pressure? No. No one cares. Because SA is on 'good side'.

[Fahran]

Interesting how Western medias ignore genocide and using of white phosphorus against children in Yemen.

White phosphorus is generally employed as a munition to screen troops or aircraft since it burns quickly and produces an abundance of smoke. The use of white phosphorus does not necessarily violate international law, unlike the use of chlorine or sarin munitions. However, it's morally and legally unacceptable to deliberately target civilians with such munitions. That said, I'm inclined to point out that less than 5,300 people have been killed as a direct result of the fighting in Yemen and that the principal humanitarian issue that threatens life is starvation, which lifting the Saudi blockade would not completely solve. You're attempting to use the less severe atrocities committed by the Saudis to rationalize support for the Baathist regime in Syria. Most reasonable people aren't keen on either of them.

When I see pictures from alleged chemical attack in Syria, I don't see much, only coughing and dirty people, and that could be anything.

That's because chlorine's principal effects are mostly internal, causing severe blistering and hemorrhaging in the lining of the throat and lungs. You might well see blisters on the skin and blood though. Sarin, likewise, isn't an incendiary substance. It's a nerve agent. Comparing the two is silly.

But children burnt to crisp and alive and looking like ghouls, can be hardly be faked.

I don't believe that any of those people were faking. Neither do most of the people who have studied the issue. It's principally people who like dictators and dislike "the West" to be edgy who are denying these sorts of things. they also conveniently ignore the fact that there are local political developments that oppose Baathism and Islamism.

But is Riyad bombed? Are Wahhabist companies under international pressure? No. No one cares. Because SA is on 'good side'.

The American government has halted multiple shipments of arms and munitions to Saudi Arabia over alleged human rights abuses. We've also condemned them multiple times. It's a matter of scale. Saudi Arabia has been more judicious in its indiscriminate strikes on heavily populated areas in Yemen as demonstrated by the smaller number of casualties by both raw number and per capita. The hunger issue cannot be adequately solved until peace is restored in the country because multiple armed factions are actively hostile to the West and the infrastructure has been damaged by the fighting. In short, the West is responding proportionately to both conflicts.

[Salus Maior]

To be fair, the losing side tends to have the most casualties in war.

There is no war, any more than the oppression and murder of Africans under apartheod was a war.

What do you call people firing rockets at each other?

That one side constantly fails doesn't make it not a war.

[Sovaal]

To be fair, the losing side tends to have the most casualties in war.

Unless you're the USSR of course

But yeah in all seriousness fuck Israel.

Honestly at this point I have no respect for any faction in the ME.

[Phoenicaea]

http://www.treccani.it/magazine/atlante ... zione.html

A good article, short and sharp thinking.. if only it could be translated, which is quite a burden..

[MERIZoC]

Reports of a coup attempt in Riyadh right now, heavy gunfire going on

[Genivaria]

Reports of a coup attempt in Riyadh right now, heavy gunfire going on

By who?

[United Muscovite Nations]

Reports of a coup attempt in Riyadh right now, heavy gunfire going on

By who?

We don't know yet. Saudi government is saying there was just a toy plane they shot down, but that would seem rather odd.

[Genivaria]

By who?

We don't know yet. Saudi government is saying there was just a toy plane they shot down, but that would seem rather odd.

An obvious fabrication we can agree.

[Socialist Czechia]

Reports of a coup attempt in Riyadh right now, heavy gunfire going on

By who?

Daily Mirror
some dude

[MERIZoC]

Reports of a coup attempt in Riyadh right now, heavy gunfire going on

By who?

It's all over twitter

[United Muscovite Nations]

Unconfirmed reports that American businessman Sam Hyde is behind the coup attempt

[Genivaria]

Unconfirmed reports that American businessman Sam Hyde is behind the coup attempt

Uhhhh I'm going to assume you're talking about someone else.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Hyde