Ship of Fools: Aleppo

Thread: Aleppo Board: Purgatory / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Sipech (# 16870) on :

Man's inhumanity to humans is shown once again, in spite of cries of "never again" that are repeated at regular intervals. Srebrenica has been cited as a precedent for what is going on Syria at the moment. I couldn't help but think of Krakow, too.

There is much hand-wringing going on: What have we (not) done? What are we doing? What can we do?

As I watch the tv, thousands of miles away, there is a numbness to it all. Not unfeeling. But an overload of anger and sorrow for a place and people I do not know, but with whom I share a humanity. A humanity that is being cut down in a storm of a bullets and blasted apart by bombs.

This week's actions will echo for years, as a damning verdict on our species.

Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :

Not very purgatorial, but I'm struggling to see the good today. And I'm giving up swearing for Advent.

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

This link.

The "Mother Theresa" jibe tells you all you need to know about the ending of the Obama Presidency. I think the Russians are already anticipating a closer relationship with the Trump Presidency.

The human catastrophe is appalling and shows, again, the dreadful things which can happen when cities and countries become pawns in armed conflicts.

mr cheesy, I'm not as good as you. I've sworn a lot about this unholy mess, mixed up with "God, Do SOMETHING" prayers. But heaven seems closed off.

[ 14. December 2016, 12:39: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]

Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :

I was shouting at Him in the car yesterday as I listened to reports. And many of the prayers offereed at the carol service were for the city.

What is so appalling is that, despite being supposedly in democracies, those in the top positions (I will not call them leaders, or rulers, or anything awarding them the status of monarchs. They are supposed to serve their people.) all behave as if the people do not exist and carry on regardless, or only listen to the voices that support them in their failure of concern. Carrying on referring to the Syrians as 'Assad's people' even when using the expression to show shock at his killing them implies some sort of justified ownership of individual souls he is supposed to care for, if being in charge of a state means anything. (Alfred the Great thought it did, anyway.)
The powers and principalities with their hands on the money and the materiel are out-barbarianing whichever historical monster it was who built a tower out of the bodies of the citizens of the beseiged city he sacked (Tamburlain?).
And God seems as powerless as we are to change things.

Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
This link.

The policy over Syria has long been a mess; the West doesn't really seem to have a clear idea of who the players are, has provided just enough intervention to keep the conflict going without enough intervention to stop it, and adopted the approach of 'lobbing some bombs over there somewhere' as a tactic of direct intervention.

OTOH if the west had gone to war with Syria back in 2012 and it had ended up as a failed state, there would have been tons more suffering over the long term, but Aleppo wouldn't currently be in the news (in the same way that Libya isn't).

Posted by Callan (# 525) on :

Something like 4000 people have died in the Second Libyan civil war, thus far. Something like 400,000 have died in Syria.

As it happens I opposed both interventions. I am not clear that I was right to do so.

Posted by Bishops Finger (# 5430) on :

It is indeed distressing and frustrating not to be able to do anything - except, perhaps, to wholeheartedly welcome any Syrian refugees (Christian or not) who happen to find their way to comparative safety in Europe.

Not that I can see Nigel Garbage, his minions, or the Daily Heil etc. doing anything of the sort. [Disappointed]

Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :

I struggle to know what to do practically. I do make my views known (mainly on twitter), because our leaders have - and are - assisting this massacre both by supplying weapons and by refusing to make real efforts to intervene.

Does anyone have a suggestion for a charity where the money will go to ease the suffering? I feel that this is something I could do - use what I have to assist others.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
I struggle to know what to do practically. I do make my views known (mainly on twitter), because our leaders have - and are - assisting this massacre both by supplying weapons and by refusing to make real efforts to intervene.

Does anyone have a suggestion for a charity where the money will go to ease the suffering? I feel that this is something I could do - use what I have to assist others.

Our family sent off a check yesterday to white helmets.org
Doctors without Borders is another very good option.

It's not enough. I, too, am shouting impolite things at the deity right now. I don't know what else to do. I just don't.

Come, Lord Jesus, come. [Votive]

Posted by Bishops Finger (# 5430) on :

Thanks for the link to White Helmets, cliffdweller. I, too, have made a donation (PayPal is my friend!).

I see that their target of $1 million has been well exceeded...

IJ

Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :

Sadly I've read that the white helmets have become targets themselves. It is hard to know what is happening because the media isn't there, but it seems likely they've taken heavy casualties.

Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :

Given the way that Assad/Putin seem to process information, that the White Helmets are not government might mean they are construed as being against government and thus fair game.

Posted by rolyn (# 16840) on :

What can be said that hasn't already been said, on these boards and else, for 4 or 5 long years.
The West had ample opportunity to back the rebels and see off the Syrian regime, it chose not to. What we have done in Iraq, and have failed to do in Lybia leaves us in no position to criticise the Russians.

No one is using the phrase Arab Spring any more, too much bloodshed and suffering has occurred for the majority to feel anything positive about the whole Mid -East post 03 shambles. That isn't to say this ill wind has blown in the favour of some, tucked away in the cosy corridors of power.

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

"Why do the nations rage?...and why do the people imagine a vain thing?"

What annoys me about the handwringing is the assumption that the West ought to be intervening in Syria. As far as I can see no convincing alternative strategy to non-intervention has been advanced. The hard reality is that until the Russians and Assad prevail the fighting will continue, so if you want peace the sooner that happens the better. If you want a just settlement, whatever that is, you should identify which side you approve of, arm it as well as possible, and continue the fighting until that side wins or is able to impose a political outcome favourable to itself. All the rest is a mixture of sincerely pious and cynical propaganda.

Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :

Hard to see what "the West" could have done without a direct military confrontation with Russia.

Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :

We might stop selling arms to the regimes in the middle east.

As a whole, I am against intervention. But that means doing all we can to prevent confrontation happening - not supplying arms, and trying to enable negotiation. Of course there is no money in that.

Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :

My Orthodox contacts are generally pro-Assad, or at least not anti-Assad - as they see him as someone who, for all his faults, has at least ensured a degree of religious freedom.

As the rebellion against Assad got underway they were warning me that some on the rebel side made Al Qaeda look like a suburban Sunday school ...

And that was before any of us over here had heard of ISIS.

The mileage does vary, though. I know Orthodox people who are fairly anti-Putin, others who think the sun shines out of his fundament ...

The impression I get from Orthodox sources it that whilst Assad is seen as far from perfect, he is regarded as the best option - they don't particularly have a problem with him. They are worried that if he is toppled then the way is open for radical jihadis to take out more Christians than they have already.

Of course, not all Syrian rebels are radical jihadis - and they know this too - but what they are worried about is that an Assad-less Syria would give scope for the hardline militants to take things out on the Christians and other religious minorities.

That doesn't mean that they aren't saddened and sickened by the violence - on either side. They just want it to stop and they see a Putin/Assad coalition as the best way to do that.

I'm not saying they are right or wrong, simply reporting the impression I get from Orthodox people who have links with Syria.

I'm not sure why we would need to support one side or the other - at least not when the rebellion started initially. What does it have to do with us?

Other than to protect Western interests (ie. Israel) which is presumably why the USA and the UK were anti-Assad in the first place. Sure, he's a dictator, but he's not the only one in the world. We don't go marching into Harare to depose Mugabe, do we?

I'm afraid I'm pretty cynical about Western real-politik in the Middle-East ... and equally cynical about what the Russians are up to.

Putin's very much pushing the line that he's supporting Assad in order to protect the Orthodox Christian and Jacobite Christian minorities that the nasty West clearly doesn't care about ...

The Christians in Iraq didn't want Saddam Hussein deposed for similar reasons. Not because they thought he was lovely but because they didn't want to see sectarian conflict after he was deposed.

Look what happened there ...

No easy answers, no obvious solutions. And it's always the poor and vulnerable who suffer the most.

Posted by rolyn (# 16840) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Hard to see what "the West" could have done without a direct military confrontation with Russia.

There did seem to be a window early on in this war where Russia didn't look very interested and rebels desperately hoped and believed the West would do in Syria what had done in Libya. Sadly for them no Western oil workers in Syria meant no real desire to go for the hatrick following the fall of Saddam and Gadaffe.
That's if anyone wants to employ soccer terminology to describe what looks to most like the propagation of bloody chaos.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

There was a vote in Parliament to bomb Assad's zones. But it lost. And some journalists argued that Obama also lost heart at this point, I don't know. But the UK presumably was fatigued by Iraq.

Yes, you can argue both ways, bombing Assad would have created the same amount of chaos and death, if the jihadists had taken over, or worse, or would have helped. Who can say.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

I heard one MP talking of her great guilt that she had voted against the bombing of Assad. Too late, too late.

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

This sounds hard but I agree with Kwesi and Gamaliel.

This is a war where so far as one can see, there is no faction one would want to see win. Assad is no cuddly chum, and he appears to be in hock to some fairly nasty people. Lined up against him is a collection of people who range from the fairly nasty to the very nasty indeed. If there ever were some nice cuddly liberals with democratic aspirations, there wasn't much evidence for it, and so far as one can see, they've long since been eliminated, gone into exile, been neutered by people more vicious than themselves, or turned to viciousness as being the only way to survive.

The victims in this are the unfortunate inhabitants of Aleppo. They are being fought over. But nobody even seems to know or care what they think about this, who they'd like to be governed by, or what prospect there might be of their ever getting the sort of government that would give them even a semblance of a liveable, yet alone a good life.

And if an army with Russian and Iranian backing can't pacify the country, why should any delusionists imagine that the US, the French or ourselves could do so?

As has been pointed out, the sequence:-
- This is terrible.
- Something must be done.
- Therefore we must do something/anything,
Is only valid if there is 'something' one can do that has a good prospect of achieving a good result. Otherwise, it is just an 'anything' which will make things much, much, worse.

[ 14. December 2016, 19:50: Message edited by: Enoch ]

Posted by rolyn (# 16840) on :

quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
There was a vote in Parliament to bomb Assad's zones. But it lost. And some journalists argued that Obama also lost heart at this point, I don't know. But the UK presumably was fatigued by Iraq.

There have been some attempts at painting Obama as an Ethelred the Unready but that's got to be a massive ruse. Pretty unlikely that Sam would have taken any more notice of little ol' England's stance on Syria any more that it would have if Blair had refused to help in Iraq.

I agree that the bloodbath would have been as bad, if not worse with Western intervention. The apparent heavy handed tactic of the Russian backed Assad force is looking like it will restore order, albeit at a terrible cost to fighters and innocents alike.
What the security map of this whole region will look like in years to come is anyone's guess. All depends if the trump/putin love affair is for real I suppose.

[ 14. December 2016, 22:52: Message edited by: rolyn ]

Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :

I think one thing that gets overlooked is what would happen if we intervened?

Should we prop up Assad, as Russia has done? Should we hand-pick a successor regime? How are we to know that the successor would be any better? Folks talk like we could somehow fix this, like we tried to fix Iraq.

Seems that Bush had a great sin of commission, and now we may have a sin of omission.

Posted by W Hyatt (# 14250) on :

quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
There was a vote in Parliament to bomb Assad's zones. But it lost. And some journalists argued that Obama also lost heart at this point, I don't know. But the UK presumably was fatigued by Iraq.

Yes, you can argue both ways, bombing Assad would have created the same amount of chaos and death, if the jihadists had taken over, or worse, or would have helped. Who can say.

I don't think Obama lost heart, I think he decided it would have been a bad idea, which is a conclusion I can sympathize with. The threshold for interceding in another country's internal affairs ought to be kept extremely high.

Posted by Dave W. (# 8765) on :

This NYTimes article from 2014 says Obama's reluctance to intervene was partly informed by a CIA study that "concluded that many past attempts by the agency to arm foreign forces covertly had a minimal impact on the long-term outcome of a conflict. They were even less effective, the report found, when the militias fought without any direct American support on the ground." (One significant exception was the CIA effort to arm and train mujahedeen rebels in Afghanistan in the 1980s; but even that seeming success turned out to be somewhat problematic.)

Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :

Re intervening or not:

Bill Clinton said his big regret about his presidency was not intervening in Rwanda.

Obama got several plateloads of trouble from Bush 43, including much war. I suspect he probably tried to avoid getting us stuck in yet another endless war.

Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:

quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat: Does anyone have a suggestion for a charity where the money will go to ease the suffering? I feel that this is something I could do - use what I have to assist others.
Our family sent off a check yesterday to white helmets.org Doctors without Borders is another very good option.

Another way is to shop through Amazon's Smile program. You shop as usual, and Amazon will make a donation to a charity you select. Doctors Without Borders is one of the options.

Also Google something like "Syria click-to-donate". Someone may have already set something up at one of the free click-to-donate sites.

Mercy Corps is another good organization, with a wider function than medical help.

I'll check and see if Kiva has anything in/for Syria.

BTW, wasn't Fr. Gregory working with Syrian refugees, years ago? Don't know if he still is, but he might have suggestions, FWIW.

Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
Bill Clinton said his big regret about his presidency was not intervening in Rwanda.

We discussed the comparison on the various pacifist threads. It seems to me that as well as needing a high threshold to intervene (i.e. really bad stuff going on) one also needs certain conditions to be met in order to have a better outcome than not intervening.

Some of those include having a partner on the ground in terms of the strength of the societal system that will be left. If one is going to destroy a government and leave a vacuum that is pretty disastrous. Whatever Kagame's faults in terms of human rights (many) he has led a competent and authoritarian government that is pretty far from a power vacuum.

I can't see what would take that place in Syria. It could easily be Isis, or a group of warring factions for the foreseeable future.

Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :

The UN is warning of genocide in South Sudan. Anyone think intervening there is on anyone's agenda?

Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :

"Intervening" shouldn't mean military force, except as a peacekeeping agency. It should mean working to negotiate a peaceful settlement.

Of course, given recent events, the UK should keep out of all negotiation. Especially our foreign minister.

Incidentally, I asked here for donation suggestions ( thank you - I have make a donation, but keep the suggestions coming as others may wish to) because I am so aware that some organisations can make use of this to garner donations which they then spend on advertising for more donations. I know I am rather cynical in this, but I want my money to be used there.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
The UN is warning of genocide in South Sudan. Anyone think intervening there is on anyone's agenda?

Not to mention the west's favorite gas-tank Saudi Arabia, with its Yemeni intervention, which has claimed thousands of lives. To say nothing of the KSA's human-rights record generally.

No intervention there, either. In fact, Justin Trudeau, idol of the international liberal smart-set, has recently been pushing through arms-sales to the Kingdom.

[ 15. December 2016, 08:57: Message edited by: Stetson ]

Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :

I am seeing Fr Gregory for lunch today. I'm in his area. His view is pretty much as I expressed it in my earlier post. I'm sure he'll say more about it when I see him.

So yes, Assad is nasty, so are the rebels, but some of the rebels are the nastiest

That seems to be the top and bottom of it.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I am seeing Fr Gregory for lunch today.

Hey, pass on greetings and try to lure him back on board!

Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
Something like 4000 people have died in the Second Libyan civil war, thus far. Something like 400,000 have died in Syria.

As it happens I opposed both interventions. I am not clear that I was right to do so.

Yes, there are fewer casualties in Libya (not sure you can discount the first civil war so easily) because the conflicts tended to be in less densely populated areas and the sectarian groups were more or less divided geographically. A better comparison would be with Iraq.

In any case you don't get to support or oppose the best of all possible interventions, only the actual intervention on the table which consisted of 'lob some missiles over there and continue to provide somewhat half-arsed support to a bunch of militants some of whom may or may not be extremists'

[ 15. December 2016, 10:04: Message edited by: chris stiles ]

Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :

Hardly anyone in the West was aware of ISIS until they burst out across Iraq and took Mosul.

There was an assumption that everyone fighting Assad had to be the good guys - on the 'my enemy's enemy is my friend' argument.

My Orthodox contacts were warning me about ISIS long before they came to the attention of the western media.

That doesn't let Putin off the hook but it suggests to me that the Western powers were either turning a blind eye to the nature of some of the rebels or else getting the wrong end of the stick.

Assad is a bastard but some of those on the other side are even worse.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

Resonance all round, but especially with Kwesi.

The West couldn't stop the Asian Arab Sunnah fomenting the sectarian insurrection in Syria. Cautious Russian intervention was inevitable, once it was obvious to them that the West would do nothing, to protect their Shia buffer.

What made the Saudis think they could 'liberate' Syria?

The CIA inspired African Arab spring achieved worse than nothing apart from stimulate that somehow? The Saudis thought the West was in the naive mood for flowers blooming everywhere? Ah! They felt threatened by that proclivity to make vaccuums for democracy to expand in to that never works? So decided to get in on the back of that folly?

Stability at almost any repressive cost seems preferable to the violent pursuit of justice.

The place of Christianity? Bind the wounds. Feed the hungry. Never back an armed revolt in the first place with silence. Do promote justice by all other means.

Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :

I didn't really want to bring this up, but I've been looking at a lot of what is being said about the White Helmets, and there are some things which range from "a bit worrying" all the way through to "extremely worrying".

Without wanting to publicise the crackpots, there is I think, at least some reason to wonder whether everything we think we know about Syria is wrong.

The chaos of the situation feeds into the conspiracy theories; the stuff coming out of Aleppo looks fake, I can understand the feeling in these fake-news and "fact-checking" obsessed days thinking that something is quite screwy when (for example) someone has a mobile phone or internet connection whilst under military bombardment. Note: that doesn't mean that any or all of these things are fake.

We then have this massive problem with misinformation. Are we dismissing a particular narrative because it is the one we're only hearing from Assad and Russia (perhaps because it is Assad and Russia)? Are we believing the twitter feed of a young girl because that grabs the attention? Are we on some level being hoodwinked by sophisticated hardline rebels masquerading as noble relief workers?

How do we know that monies raised by the White Helmet campaign isn't actually going to jihadists?

I don't know, my head is spinning. I think the most likely - awful - thing happening is a terrible Syrian government massacre. But it isn't beyond the realms of possibility that we're all being cleverly lied to.

Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :

As ever, with my both/and proclivities, I think it's a bit of both.

Yes, it is a Syrian Government massacre of rebels and some innocents. No, I don't think we are being 'lied' to as such but I think we are being presented with a one-sided view of what's going on.

Assad is a bastard. So was his Dad. Yes, he has been guilty of war crimes.

But some of the rebels are equally bastardly and equally guilty of war crimes.

Both/and

Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:

But some of the rebels are equally bastardly and equally guilty of war crimes.

Both/and

not actually what I was talking about. But hey, if you've only got a hammer, everything looks like nails.

Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :

A bit of history by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Follow the money in a pipeline war which has been sold as a humanitarian war. Why not regional stability instead of regime change? Because it isn't profitable.

[ 15. December 2016, 15:01: Message edited by: no prophet's flag is set so... ]

Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on :

This seems to me to be a pretty clear explanation of the problem: there are competing narratives. They can't all be true.

Posted by Callan (# 525) on :

quote:
Originally posted by chris stiles:

quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
Something like 4000 people have died in the Second Libyan civil war, thus far. Something like 400,000 have died in Syria.

As it happens I opposed both interventions. I am not clear that I was right to do so.
Yes, there are fewer casualties in Libya (not sure you can discount the first civil war so easily) because the conflicts tended to be in less densely populated areas and the sectarian groups were more or less divided geographically. A better comparison would be with Iraq.

In any case you don't get to support or oppose the best of all possible interventions, only the actual intervention on the table which consisted of 'lob some missiles over there and continue to provide somewhat half-arsed support to a bunch of militants some of whom may or may not be extremists'

Well, if you put together the two civll wars you get something in the region of 20,000 casualties. However, I hardly think that all 20,000 can be blamed on Western intervention. The late Colonel Gaddafi ought to take at least some of the rap. But, whatever, casualties in Libya are something in the region of 5% of casualties in Syria. I don't think that Western Intervention in 2013 would have brought down the casualty rate by 95% But can we be sure it wouldn't have brought it down by 50% or 25%?. He who saves a single life, and all that.

Casualties in Iraq are harder to quantify. The ceiling is somewhere int the 500,000 range (worse than Syria) with a floor at somewhere in the region of 113,000 (not as bad, but admittedly still appalling). But bear in mind that the Syrian conflict, at least in its latest iteration, kicked off in 2011. So it has run up 400,000 casualties in five years as opposed to 500,000 (worst case) in thirteen. So that's 80,000 per annum as opposed to 38,000 per annum in Iraq.

As I say, I was opposed to all three interventions. My feeling is that the UK was definitely wrong to get involved in the invasion of Iraq. On balance, I think we were wiser to stay out of Syria. I honestly don't know whether we were right to intervene in Libya or not. Either choice had costs and benefits and the costs have, and will be, borne by the civilians of the Middle East. My gut instinct is to say that I thought the supporters of the Iraq war were too glib in their assumption that there was no problem that could not be solved by the exercise of western military might. I increasingly think that the non-interventionists are too glib in their assumption that the only thing we can do is stand on the sidelines and wring our hands.

Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :

To get all philosophical here, the concept of hyperreality is vital here. This is a concept that argues that the truth is impossible to find, because all we ever see is the media (of all sorts) presentation of it. So yes, we only get the news from Aleppo through a variety of media. Those sources are all biased, and - crucially - it is not possible to avoid those biases. Or even to know what they are.

The Adam Curtis film Hypernormality gives some interesting insights of what this actually means. But in practical terms, it means that we cannot know the truth. We cannot act on "the truth". We can act on what we know, and the best we can do is act knowing that we are very limited in our knowledge.

I know I plug this a lot, but to understand the situation in the Middle East (especially), I think it is critical to grasp the principles of this, and understand how much we know and how much we don't know.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I am seeing Fr Gregory for lunch today. I'm in his area. His view is pretty much as I expressed it in my earlier post. I'm sure he'll say more about it when I see him.

So yes, Assad is nasty, so are the rebels, but some of the rebels are the nastiest

That seems to be the top and bottom of it.

So perhaps for now the best response, inadequate as it may seem, is to give to and support refugee resettlement?

And pray. Lots and lots of prayer
[Votive]

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

Interesting opinion by some journalists, that the fall of Aleppo will produce a new embittered phase in the civil war, going on for years. I have no idea if this is true, but I would guess that Sunni and Kurdish areas are both afraid of Syrian/Russian forces, and also determined to resist.

It's possible that Assad will sweep all before him, but it sounds unlikely. Will the Russians or Hezbollah really want to root out all rebel groups from rural areas?

Hell is followed by hell.

Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :

I'd suggest it's more a case of overlapping rather than competing narratives, mr cheesy.

Yes, I know I'm wielding a single hammer - but it's got two faces or heads to it. Both/and.

Anyhow, for those that remember him, Fr Gregory is active on a well-known social media site where he's coming under fire for putting forward a perspective that doesn't fit the Western one.

I tried to lure him back here and he laughed.

Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Callan:

Casualties in Iraq are harder to quantify. The ceiling is somewhere int the 500,000 range (worse than Syria) with a floor at somewhere in the region of 113,000 (not as bad, but admittedly still appalling). But bear in mind that the Syrian conflict, at least in its latest iteration, kicked off in 2011. So it has run up 400,000 casualties in five years as opposed to 500,000 (worst case) in thirteen. So that's 80,000 per annum as opposed to 38,000 per annum in Iraq.

Comparing the most conservative estimate for Iraq with the least conservative estimate for Syria is possibly not the way to go.

In any case when an intervention is supposed to save 10s of thousands out of figures that are magnitudes greater it is probably employing a strategy that is equally subject to chance and Murphy's Law making things a lot worse.

Besides what's the lesson? That the better strategy is to fabricate evidence of Syria possessing WMD and an illegal invasion ? Or take the approach that we already have a 'model that works' - arm the regime to the teeth and allow them to put down nascent democratic movements (Bahrain).

quote:

I increasingly think that the non-interventionists are too glib in their assumption that the only thing we can do is stand on the sidelines and wring our hands.

Except that sitting on the sidelines and wringing our hands is exactly what the West has *not* done in this situation - until now.

I'm happy for intervention to be discussed in a context where the proponents describe which model of intervention in the past they would like to implement (and on this scale I'd give them Bosnia and Kosovo as 'successes' of sorts).

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Interesting opinion by some journalists, that the fall of Aleppo will produce a new embittered phase in the civil war, going on for years. I have no idea if this is true, but I would guess that Sunni and Kurdish areas are both afraid of Syrian/Russian forces, and also determined to resist.

It's possible that Assad will sweep all before him, but it sounds unlikely. Will the Russians or Hezbollah really want to root out all rebel groups from rural areas?

Hell is followed by hell.

Never underestimate the lengths the Russians will go to. Never. They are smarter and more ruthless than us by a country mile. Since Daniel's day. As Churchill knew and as we are seeing, the bear is never as strong, or as weak as she looks. Like British cops (they're not called Plod for nothing), but without the charm. Slow as treacle and as inexorable. It took them centuries to conquer the Caucasus and most of Muslim Turkestan. Never come to their attention. As a possible threat. They have been players, incredible survivors for two and a half millenia, I can't think of another culture that has been burned to the ground, lost a game and risen from the ashes and learned from it, stronger, so often, to play again.

They play the long game. They know every possible move. They have no morality but Rodina. Mother Russia. They are bloody awesome dreadful people and they have won the war against truth that the Soviets lost. They never forget. And they never forgive; how badly the West treated them AFTER the fall of communism.

And now they have a partner in Washington.

The bear has licked its wounds. The bear is back. It will NOT allow the Sunnah to make any inroads. The Saudis threatened to export Islamism. That was most unwise. The post-liberal, post-multilateral, post-international West is utterly irrelevant, except as a bilateral business partner.

Count on Russian self interest for the rest of our lifetimes at least. I can't imagine any force that stop it, let alone reverse it.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

Can, bugger.

Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :

Martin - I think those comments count as racist.

However some of what you have said does apply to Putin. I think it is interesting how they lost the cold war to the US, but Putin seems now to be the prime world leader, with a pointless moron at his beck and call in the US. I don't know whether they actually did manipulate the election, but I feel sure that they could, and the Putin would have no qualms about it.

And under all of the global political manoeuvrings, it is people - the ordinary people - who suffer. We may be heading towards a single global power (or not), but unlike every SF trope, it is a Russian not US dominated one.

And, of course, a strong EU would be a force to reckon with, that might stand against such a threat. If we hadn't spent 10 years breaking it.

All hail Putin, our new overlord.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
A bit of history by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Follow the money in a pipeline war which has been sold as a humanitarian war. Why not regional stability instead of regime change? Because it isn't profitable.

YES! I read about the pipelines years ago. This is Russia and its Shia allies at war with Sunni (Arab, Turkish) Islam, America's allies, in W. Asia. Russia is easily winning.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

The points about Russian domination of the area are clearly accurate. However, both Syria and Iraq are faced with large Sunni areas, which are restive under rule both by the Iraqui govt. and Assad.

The problem now for the Russians and the Iraqui governement is that any leaning towards Iran and Hezbollah will be seen as a big warning sign in tribal areas.

This is what tilted them towards IS, and before that, AQ, although the latter were ultimately driven out.

I can see the recruitment drive for IS already - keep out the Russians, keep out Hezbollah, and the Shia militias, who want to kill your tribe and your family.

Maybe there will be some sensible governance to prevent this, but I wouldn't count on it. Look at what happened to the 'Awakening', which turned into a disaster, and helped IS.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

The Russians are well experienced in taming vast Muslim territories and using proxies. The Qatar-Turkey gas pipeline is dead, there's no safe way round Shia Syria; E. Turkey is obviously exposed to Kurdish threat and Shia Iraq threat prior to that. The so called Islamic (Shia) - Friendship (Iran, Iraq, Syria) gas pipeline is dead in the water too, it suits Russia for it to never happen as that would compete with Russian gas supplies to Europe. Russia could let it go ahead if it were paid handsomely to guarantee its security to offset the lowering of its gas prices. Tempting. But that would be to Europe's advantage. So nah.

Could Syrian and Iraqi Sunni insurgents, supplied by the US through Turkey and the majority of W. Asian Arabs (the Sunnah, as a cultural term that unites them?), break the Russian-Shia dominance, be Russia's next Afghanistan? Not without challenging Russian air supremacy which ... ain't going to happen. That's Defcon 3. To start.

The West has lost the upper hand in the ME for a generation at least. Trump 'could care less', he'll do bilateral deals with everybody, but the ultimate gain is the effect of Russian suppression of W. Asian Sunni and European economic power by restricting gas supplies.

Liberal, humanitarian, multilateral considerations as whined on by Cameron and Kerry are utterly irrelevant.

From whence come wars from among you? From the lusts that war in your members. Russia's and America's lusts are looking increasingly aligned.

Happy days.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

Well, I stopped making predictions about the Middle East after Suez. It's the original kaleidoscope, give it a shake and a new pattern emerges. I wonder who predicted that Hezbollah would be rampaging across the region, well, part of it? Israel, probably.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

That's inspiring! You must be in your 8th decade. Mere boy in my 7th me. Aye, prophecy is very difficult, especially with regard to the future. The Chinese know that. Don't know if the Russians do.

Posted by rolyn (# 16840) on :

The Russians predicted overwhelming the Nazi 'elephant' accurately. Can't say what they do is especially pretty but then, as we know, the West isn't the White knight in the Order of saints despite the manner it is constantly presented to us it's subjects.

The following is probably a naive prediction but if Pax Russana works in the Mid East where Pax Americana has failed for decades then the world might be better for it. Either that or, as the words of D H Lawrence -- The love of Peace becomes very loud when war is imminent.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

Hmmm. Vizzini in The Princess Bride: ... "never get involved in a land war in Asia". Pax Russiana, I like it. Leave them to it. Churchill knew that the loss of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires was bad news.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

It seems we are actually no where near as a species in moving on from patriarchy, we want authoritarian leaders and cultures, we don't want equality, shared vulnerability, we want saturnine Big Daddies from God on down to protect us from our desire for freedom. I blame evolution.

Posted by rolyn (# 16840) on :

So long as evolution keeps punching more males than females then I'll sit down beside you on that one Martin. Even the great cull of males 1914 -- 18 didn't stop all the consequential phallus wars from then until now.

Coming back to Aleppo, why the evacuation now when the battle is won? Used to be the the other way round in 1945 with people returning to, what remained of their homes when the hot fighting was done.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

The evacuation, from ruins with no infrastructure, is in large part of Sunni insurrectionists, 'rebels' going to rebel held, i.e. Sunni areas.

Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :

It's akin to what happened in the Civil Wars in this country. When a town or fortress fell, the defenders were generally allowed safe passage to neutral or enemy held territory, with certain conditions attached.

There were infamous occasions when this didn't happen, as at Drogheda and Wexford.

Of course there was collateral damage and civilian casualties in Civil War sieges but they didn't have barrel bombs nor air strikes.

With Aleppo, the eastern part of the city has been rendered uninhabitable so nobody's going to want to return there any time soon, unless they want to go down fighting in some last ditch show of resistance. That said, there still seem to be plenty of people trapped there.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

Good article(imo), by Neil MacDonald of the CBC...

The fall of Aleppo isn't humaity's disgrace

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
Good article(imo), by Neil MacDonald of the CBC...

The fall of Aleppo isn't humaity's disgrace

Yes, I think that's a pretty fair assessment.

Posted by Anglican_Brat (# 12349) on :

I remember in the 1990s there was a debate about Canada's intervention in Kosovo and I as, an idealistic, let's save the world teenager thought there was no question we should go in and save people from Milosevic's violence.

On a CBC discussion show about the issue, a middle aged woman stood up to speak and she said that her son was in the armed forces. She said, frankly that she was absolutely opposed to military intervention, there was no way she would support putting her son's life at risk even for a "good cause."

At the time, I thought she didn't see the obvious humanitarian rationale, but over time I realize that I have been too judgmental of her. Intervention even in the name of a good cause, puts lives at risk. I wonder though, if we do make a very harsh judgment when we are ruling against intervention in a situation like this. If we are talking about putting for example, our soldiers' lives on the line and deciding against intervention, we are making a value judgment about the lives of our people as opposed to those people over there. We are saying that Canadians' lives or Americans' lives matter more than Middle Eastern lives.

And that chills me.

Posted by simontoad (# 18096) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
To get all philosophical here, the concept of hyperreality is vital here. This is a concept that argues that the truth is impossible to find, because all we ever see is the media (of all sorts) presentation of it. So yes, we only get the news from Aleppo through a variety of media. Those sources are all biased, and - crucially - it is not possible to avoid those biases. Or even to know what they are.

The Adam Curtis film Hypernormality gives some interesting insights of what this actually means. But in practical terms, it means that we cannot know the truth. We cannot act on "the truth". We can act on what we know, and the best we can do is act knowing that we are very limited in our knowledge.

I know I plug this a lot, but to understand the situation in the Middle East (especially), I think it is critical to grasp the principles of this, and understand how much we know and how much we don't know.

Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.

Don Rumsfeldt, Philosophe

Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :

Brat - I am not sure what that woman thought her son was doing in the forces if she wouldn't want him to put his life at risk. That is sort of the nature of the role. So I think she might have been rather deluded.

At the same time, I do think it is far too easy to talk about "intervention" of any sort, without realising that it involves people deliberately risking their lives. But that is the point of a military. It is not just to attack other people, it is to protect people (which means being at risk).

I do think intervention needs to involve far more than just attacking. It should involve seeking a resolution, often with a military threat - not to force a solution, but to keep a solution working.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

Our military lives are to be risked in our defense, in our national self interest. It chills me when we think we can intervene as in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and not make bad situations worse. We never learn. We only find the appropriate, proportionate military-political response rarely: liberating Kuwait (text book blitzkrieg), Sierra Leone (special forces op., like Muscat and Oman a generation before although that turned in to a successful hearts and minds op.). Paradoxically a little intervention can be the worst: talking situations up like encouraging "freedom" in Syria, bombing Gadhafi; both causing utter lawlessness. Unless we calculate that is worth it. How that can ever be I can't imagine, apart from getting two of ones enemies to weaken each other.

Anglican_Brat, can you or anyone think of any, and I mean any, conflict, starting with the US Civil War say (where good and bad seemed delineated), where the cost in 'our' lives, the side of the 'good' guys, made a difference to the overall cost? Apart from the rare examples above? To which I'd add British intervention in and around Malaysia.

When should we have intervened in Rwanda before the unprecedented genocide? Why? When there was no indication of it at all. Until there was. When should we have intervened - which we wisely didn't with boots on the ground - in any African conflict since the 50's?

I nonetheless really am beginning to think we live in the best of all possible worlds, that there is no chilling, missed moral imperative, just social evolution in action that might eventually impress itself collectively memetically upon us to the point where we can all lay down our arms and eat together as equals.

Ten thousand years. If we won't invest in conflict resolution, peace studies, Christian peace making (not pacifism at any price), we'll have to learn that long, hard way. If it can be done that way without the apocalypse.

Posted by rolyn (# 16840) on :

Thinking also that Western bombs in Serbia were successful in bringing the Balkans back from the brink.

So long as we have the selge hammer in the tool kit we are going to find situations where it is used. Disarmament doesn't work, arming ourselves to the point whereby everyone's fucked kind of works.
But indeed yes, on the sole matter of limited military interventions the general public have discovered a new sense of cynicism since that day in 03 when we thought the Iraqi people were going to throw garlands of flowers over liberating Allied troops.

[ 18. December 2016, 12:57: Message edited by: rolyn ]

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

Anglican Brat, two thoughts.

1. It isn't a question of whose lives we think are more important. Her son had presumably enlisted in the Canadian army accepting that he might have to risk his life to protect other people attacking Canada. That doesn't mean that she should be expected to accept that her son is sent off to risk his life in a cause which isn't obviously Canada related.

2. If we look at just war theory, it isn't enough that all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective. There must also be a serious prospect of success.

It isn't enough just to say 'something must be done'. 'Then to side with truth' is not always noble - whatever that fatuous hymn might say. There has to be a 'something' that has a worthwhile prospect of delivering peace. A fundamental problem that there has been all along with the Syrian civil war is that that second 'something' has always been absent.

All of our hearts weep to see pictures of the destruction of Aleppo and the terrible situation of the children there. That is right. If our hearts are not torn, they have something wrong with them. But that in itself can take wing with a frightening rhetoric of its own. If we go back to the Balkan crises of the 1990s were the Serbs worse than anyone else? Or was it just that the reason why the victims were Bosnians rather than Serbs was simply because it was the Serbs who happened to be winning? I don't know. Nobody ever will. But, harsh though the thought is, it is something one ought to hold in mind.

Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :

quote:
Originally posted by simontoad:

quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
To get all philosophical here, the concept of hyperreality is vital here. This is a concept that argues that the truth is impossible to find, because all we ever see is the media (of all sorts) presentation of it. So yes, we only get the news from Aleppo through a variety of media. Those sources are all biased, and - crucially - it is not possible to avoid those biases. Or even to know what they are.

The Adam Curtis film Hypernormality gives some interesting insights of what this actually means. But in practical terms, it means that we cannot know the truth. We cannot act on "the truth". We can act on what we know, and the best we can do is act knowing that we are very limited in our knowledge.

I know I plug this a lot, but to understand the situation in the Middle East (especially), I think it is critical to grasp the principles of this, and understand how much we know and how much we don't know.
Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.

Don Rumsfeldt, Philosophe

The point about Baudrillards ideas are that we don't know anything. The known knowns are not certain, not known at all.

The known unknowns are also wrong - we don't what it is we don't known ever, because we don't know what we known.

Then the unknown knowns are also non-existent, because the things we don't know that we know, we don't know for certain.

Leaving us with just the unknown unknowns. So everything is in the difficult category.

Posted by Anglican_Brat (# 12349) on :

quote:
Anglican Brat, two thoughts.

1. It isn't a question of whose lives we think are more important. Her son had presumably enlisted in the Canadian army accepting that he might have to risk his life to protect other people attacking Canada. That doesn't mean that she should be expected to accept that her son is sent off to risk his life in a cause which isn't obviously Canada related.

It did startle me at the time because in my experience, military families tend to be reluctant to speak openly about political issues. At the time I remember this was before Canada officially committed itself to intervention in Kosovo.

The few times I see military relatives on TV, they tend to be supportive of missions in general.

quote:

2. If we look at just war theory, it isn't enough that all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective. There must also be a serious prospect of success.

When I studied political science in my undergrad, my IR professor made a distinction between "peacekeeping" and "peacemaking." "Peacekeeping" entailed two parties who had an agreement to cease hostilities and the international community intervening as a third party mediator to ensure that both parties kept to the peace.

"Peacemaking" involves the international community intervening to coerce two warring parties to make peace. This is fraught with danger, because how can one force two actors or nations who want to kill each other, to stop?

Peacemaking missions, almost seems doomed to be failures, and that would be the type of hypothetical mission that would apply to Syria.

[ 18. December 2016, 21:20: Message edited by: Anglican_Brat ]

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
Good article(imo), by Neil MacDonald of the CBC...

The fall of Aleppo isn't huma[n]ity's disgrace
Yes, I think that's a pretty fair assessment.

What the Hell is happening to me? Excellent.

Posted by Father Gregory (# 310) on :

Just to show you I am still alive. I would love to come back here if I had enough hours in the day. Suffice to say I have put a huge amount of this up on FB. For those who care to churn their way through it, here is my link: Fr Gregory FB The ONLY journalist giving an inside view of what the Syrian situation is really like is Robert Fisk in my opinion. Here's something for your paranoia though. 3 years ago we were channelling funds into our Church relief effort on the ground. Then Lloyds Bank (aka Whitehall) effectively stopped that by demanding that we presented receipts for every penny spent. Since then they have been subjecting us to regular anti-terrorism assessments. A few weeks ago you will recall HMG stopped 3 Iraqi bishops from enterring the country to attend the consecration of the new cathedral of the Syrian Orthodox Church (Coptic family) in London. Go figure.

[ 19. December 2016, 09:14: Message edited by: Father Gregory ]

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

[Smile]

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
Just to show you I am still alive. I would love to come back here if I had enough hours in the day.

Good to know [Smile]

Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
Just to show you I am still alive. I would love to come back here if I had enough hours in the day. Suffice to say I have put a huge amount of this up on FB. For those who care to churn their way through it, here is my link: Fr Gregory FB The ONLY journalist giving an inside view of what the Syrian situation is really like is Robert Fisk in my opinion. Here's something for your paranoia though. 3 years ago we were channelling funds into our Church relief effort on the ground. Then Lloyds Bank (aka Whitehall) effectively stopped that by demanding that we presented receipts for every penny spent. Since then they have been subjecting us to regular anti-terrorism assessments. A few weeks ago you will recall HMG stopped 3 Iraqi bishops from enterring the country to attend the consecration of the new cathedral of the Syrian Orthodox Church (Coptic family) in London. Go figure.

First of all, hey, you! [Big Grin]

Second of all, man, that post is chilling.

Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :

Fr. G!!! [Yipee]

Thanks for the info.

Posted by Alt Wally (# 3245) on :

We'e out of ideas about what to do, and now seem to be ceding influence to other players. We could have toppled Assad, who opposed no direct threat to our interests, but at great cost to ourselves and the Syrians. People who do truly present a threat to us likely would have filled the power vacuum, and likely would have slaughtered their way to full control (Alawites, Shia, Christians, etc.) in the process.

We drew a red line and stepped away. We are at a loss.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

Toppling Assad would have been easier than toppling Saddam and not as easy as toppling Gaddafi with no immediate cost to ourselves at all. Launching a rain of cruise missiles has a Keynesian benefit. The consequences would have been Rwandan level genocide of all minorities, far worse than Bosnia. But Obama was never going to launch without Britain and Cameron wasn't Blair, thank God.

Posted by rolyn (# 16840) on :

At least our media and politicians were consistent. We were told from the start of the Syrian Rebellion that going in on the side of the rebels would risk putting an even more extremist regime into power.
That policy did not alter, just the rhetoric when Russia finally decided it was game over for the rebels. The West stated categorically that it was not prepared to put boots on the ground then pretends to all sniffy when others did.

Had Clinton been elected there was talk of implementing a no fly zone over Aleppo. Keep the pot bubbling, keep assad enfeebled and never mind how many people's lives were being blighted over it. Thank God this hell looks to be nearing an end.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

There are no Russian BOTG.

Posted by rolyn (# 16840) on :

Fair enough, my mistake.

Posted by Alt Wally (# 3245) on :

There is a small contingent of special forces and advisors. They have not pushed in a lot of their chips with Syria though, and have gained a lot as a result in terms of influence in the Middle East. We are seemingly pushing the Turks in to their arms as well, which probably nobody saw coming.

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