• Welcome to the Green and Gold Rugby forums. As you can see we've upgraded the forums to new software. Your old logon details should work, just click the 'Login' button in the top right.

The Middle East

Status
Not open for further replies.

Slim 293

Stirling Mortlock (74)
Cheers!

Reposted from the other thread.........

A couple of interesting pieces on Syria (focusing on Assad) in recent days.............

The first one from Prof. Tim Anderson from the University of Sydney who published this piece yesterday:


http://www.globalresearch.ca/why-syrians-support-bashar-al-assad/5405208

Why Syrians support Bashar al Assad

The sudden reversion of Washington to a ‘war on terror’ pretext for intervention in Syria has confused western audiences. For three years they watched ‘humanitarian intervention’ stories, which poured contempt on the Syrian President’s assertion that he was fighting foreign backed terrorists. Now the US claims to be leading the fight against those same terrorists.

But what do Syrians think, and why do they continue to support a man the western powers have claimed is constantly attacking and terrorising ‘his own people’? To understand this we must consider the huge gap between the western caricature of Bashar al Assad the ‘brutal dictator’ and the popular and urbane figure within Syria.



And this one from former high ranking CIA official Graham E Fuller in the Huff Post who calls for the west to join forces with Assad to fight ISIS:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/graham-e-fuller/us-assad-isis-strategy_b_5898142.html

Embracing Assad Is a Better Strategy for the U.S. Than Supporting the Least Bad Jihadis
Assad is not going to be overthrown in the foreseeable future. He is hardly an ideal ruler, but he is rational, has run a longtime functioning state and is supported by many in Syria who rightly fear what new leader or domestic anarchy might come after his fall. He has not represented a genuinely key threat to the U.S. in the Middle East -- despite neocon rhetoric. The time has now come to bite the bullet, admit failure, and to permit -- if not assist -- Assad in quickly winding down the civil war in Syria and expelling the jihadis. We cannot both hate Assad and hate those jihadis (like ISIS) who also hate Assad. We fight, crudely put, with al-Qaeda in Syria and against al-Qaeda in Iraq. But restoration of order in Syria is essential to the restoration of order in the Iraqi, Lebanese, Israeli and Jordanian borderlands. Permitting Assad to remain in power will also restore a Syria that historically never has acted as a truly "sectarian" or religious state in its behavior in the Middle East -- until attacked by Saudi Arabia for its supposed Shi'ism.

We have little to lose and much to gain in such a reverse in policy vis-à-vis Assad. If we persist on overthrowing him by force, we will perpetuate the disastrous status quo -- an anti-jihadi campaign that the administration has already acknowledged may be morphing into a new open-ended war for years to come -- all the while generating tens of thousands of new jihadis fighting new jihads that we cannot bomb out of existence.
 

Slim 293

Stirling Mortlock (74)
WMD as a reason if you fear they have it and they choose not to show you they don't when they were asked --- leads to suspicion. There are consequences. If Badgad had said have a look and see what you can find and nothing was found then things may well have been very different.

None of the excuses that the US had for invading Iraq were legitimate, and there was no intelligence prior to the invasion to prove otherwise except for the shady testimony of a defector with a clear agenda.
 

Runner

Nev Cottrell (35)
None of the excuses that the US had for invading Iraq were legitimate, and there was no intelligence prior to the invasion to prove otherwise except for the shady testimony of a defector with a clear agenda.

"WMD as a reason if you fear they have it and they choose not to show you they don't when they were asked --- leads to suspicion. There are consequences. If Badgad had said have a look and see what you can find and nothing was found then things may well have been very different."

Doesn't change what I said. It could have been avoided. Remember that UN sanctioned this after many governemnts looking at the issue.

Fear will do that to governments. Look at the US and allies concerns about WWII with the Nazi and Japanese WMD programs.
 

Slim 293

Stirling Mortlock (74)
No, it couldn't have been avoided because the US and Britain were going to go into Iraq regardless of how compliant Saddam was with the UN's weapon inspectors..............
 

Gnostic

Mark Ella (57)
"WMD as a reason if you fear they have it and they choose not to show you they don't when they were asked --- leads to suspicion. There are consequences. If Badgad had said have a look and see what you can find and nothing was found then things may well have been very different."

Doesn't change what I said. It could have been avoided. Remember that UN sanctioned this after many governemnts looking at the issue.

Fear will do that to governments. Look at the US and allies concerns about WWII with the Nazi and Japanese WMD programs.

Fear I don't think so. More like strategic outcomes being sort in many cases.

The WMD (Chemical and Biological) of the Japenese were taken by the US along with the scientists and General Ishi and they were never tried for War Crimes etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731

Then look at the Nazi Program for Nuclear and look where the main scientists ended up post war, even though the Allies succeeded with the Manhattan Project there was a lot of research they got from the Nazis to further promote their knowledge. Also on the weapons front the Allies got the jump on the Soviets by taking Wernher Von Braun to the US and not trying him for war crimes. Likewise other members of the industrial complex like the Krupp family even when convicted of crimes against humanity/ war crimes serviced little to no time.

To the victors go the spoils. They could get away with it in the old days, in the information age the hypocrisy is too easily seen.
 

Slim 293

Stirling Mortlock (74)
A short pice from the NY Times about the Saudi destruction of Mecca:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/01/opinion/the-destruction-of-mecca.html?smid=fb-share&_r=1

The cultural devastation of Mecca has radically transformed the city. Unlike Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo, Mecca was never a great intellectual and cultural center of Islam. But it was always a pluralistic city where debate among different Muslim sects and schools of thought was not unusual. Now it has been reduced to a monolithic religious entity where only one, ahistoric, literal interpretation of Islam is permitted, and where all other sects, outside of the Salafist brand of Saudi Islam, are regarded as false.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top