Notably and sensibly lacking a byline
this globalpost piece is the closest to real coverage of the Syrian situation from inside the country I have seen so far.
The Arab revolutions: an end to dogma
An opinion piece, which is sub-titled:
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The popular uprisings in the Arab world are a great disaster for a radical camp led by Syria-Iran and long indulged by media such as al-Jazeera. A great opportunity follows..
Particularly interesting the comments on Al-Jazeera.
Link:http://www.opendemocracy.net/hazem-s...s-end-to-dogma
Whose revolution is it anyway?
Some insight from a British journalist and former politician, Matthew Parris, best known as a parliamentary and social sketch writer; which opens with:
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..my own bent has been to ask if revolts in North Africa and now Syria are really just cries of despair from an increasingly educated and in-touch generation of (mostly) young and (often) unemployed Arab men, at the failure of their prospects to keep pace with their hopes — it being easiest to blame the despotism or dysfunction of their governments for what is at root economic failure.
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..they feel humiliated for their countrymen and country, in the face of a police state so unlikeable that even its beneficiaries (he says) cannot like it.
He adds that to Arabs he knows, the sight of Arab blood being spilt at the hands of other Arabs is very shameful; and victimhood, even by proxy, has helped fuel indignation. There is also (he says) something ‘attractive’ (his word) to some of his students in the picture of young Arab men standing up to authority and force: heroism alone, almost regardless of cause...
Yes, based on one persons's first-hand knowledge of one group of youths in Syria.
Link:http://www.spectator.co.uk/columnist...t-anyway.thtml
IISS comment on Syria: Making sense of Syria
An IISS Strategic Comment, which ends with:
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Meanwhile, the protest movement continues to gain momentum inside Syria, with nothing but the president's departure now likely to satisfy the opposition. With dissent within his country now too widespread for Assad to ignore, some analysts are hoping Syria's fast-degenerating economy will also prove a fatal weakness. In this context, the fact that protests have finally reached the country's second city and commercial hub, Aleppo, may be particularly significant. And how things now play out in Syria depends on whether Assad and his officials meeting growing dissent with ever-repressive force – or blink.
Link:http://www.iiss.org/publications/str...ense-of-syria/
Following one link I found 'Syria Comment' a blogsite for a US academic on Syria:http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/
US public diplomacy in Syria
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Perhaps the most important development, however, was in Syria. In Damascus, we saw large protests in the center of the city, and security fired on the crowds, a sure sign that even the capital is starting to turn against the regime, slowly but steadily.
(My emphasis) In Hama, US Ambassador Robert Ford was described by the Syrian Interior Minister as meeting "with saboteurs in Hama ... who erected checkpoints, cut traffic and prevented citizens from going to work." However, he got a hero's welcome, and nearly 500,000 people peacefully took to the streets with few incidents of security cracking down on the city.
Taken from:http://www.enduringamerica.com/home/...st-friday.html
Alas no sourcs cited and a search found several sources.
Al-Jazeera has a very short report:http://blogs.aljazeera.net/liveblog/...ul-8-2011-2238
There is a NYT report with some more detail:http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/09/wo...t/09syria.html
A DoS spokesperson added:
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Ms. Nuland confirmed that Mr. Ford drove through the city center on Friday but decided not to stay so as “not to become the story himself” and left before the protests got under way.
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Blake Hounshell, the managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine, observed: The more I think about it, the more extraordinary Ford’s visit to Hama is. When was the last time a U.S. ambassador did something so bold?
Link, with YouTube clip:http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/201...an-protesters/
Note the French Ambassador was there too, apparently not a coordinated visit.
Clinton defends U.S. response to crackdown in Syria
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...0JJ_story.html
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Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday defended her department’s incremental response to the slayings of protesters in Syria, arguing that demands for the ouster of Syria’s president would accomplish little without the support of key allies in the region.
Agree, and it reinforces a point I made previously that when we pursue isolationist trade policies it does more harm to us than to the country we're trying to influence. We lose both business opportunities and leverage. Furthermore, the fact is that our businesses can more have more influence on the nation than any Embassy and assorted diplomats, because our businesses will have a direct impact on their lives. We missed an opportunity to engage in business in Cuba years ago, and are still slow rolling business efforts to appease a small group of angry Cubans exiles in Florida.
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Clinton also sought to portray the Obama administration’s policies in Syria and Libya as examples of “smart power,” an approach that she said emphasizes collective action and international consensus over unilateral solutions that rely disproportionately on U.S. troops and treasure.
Maybe I'm a hopeless iconoclast, but I had to laugh at this one. Now we know that smart power is the hopelessness associated with multinational consensus. Another way to pretend to take action, while developing a vanguard of a thousand excuses on why you can't. :rolleyes:
This realistic and practical stuff is getting out of hand
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Originally Posted by
Rex Brynen
There is no strategy without some discussion, or at least recognition, of operational capabilities...It isn't simply a minor detail to be left to the "tacticians."
There's no sense in limiting ones self to operational capabilities -- not to mention realities and the all important political permissions, foreign and domestic -- when one can do unconstrained grand concepts which will, of course, always work as hoped. Hoped as opposed to planned or designed... ;)
Eschew stultification!!! :D
Has anyone heard official comments from China, Russia, Iran etc. on the situation in
Bill,
This week much was made on the BBC radio about a Russian statement:
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In my discussions with President Assad during our personal conversations and in our correspondence I have been advocating one principal idea: that he should immediately launch reforms, reconcile with the opposition, restore civil accord, and start developing a modern state. Should he fail to do that, he is in for a grim fate, and we will eventually have to take some decisions on Syria, too. Naturally, we have been watching developments very attentively. The situation is changing, and so are our objectives.
Link:http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/08/05/54246871.html
My initial response to your question:
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.. the first UN Security Council statement condemning the state violence against civilians. Traditional friends of Syria, such as the Russians and Chinese, went along with the statement, and other council members (Brazil, South Africa and India) also dropped their reservations and backed a statement that had taken months of diplomatic haggling.
Russian support for the statement seemed to reflect a real shift in position in Moscow, where President Dmitry Medvedev said that if President Assad did not bring about serious changes quickly, he would face "a sad fate".
Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-14467849
All 'Diplomacy' is effectively public...
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Originally Posted by
Bob's World
No, the US in 1919 was not "powerless" relative to the UK and France in 1919; we merely lacked the interest or will to weigh in on the issue of the region newly freed from Ottoman control.
Thank you for at long last acknowledging a point I've been making to you for a couple of years.
The US was, indeed, not powerless. Please note that I did not say we were, I said Wilson was powerless, a quite different thing. Wilson was the President and at the height of his pulpit power -- and he knew the US would not play his silly game, so HE was powerless to impeded British or French stupidity and cupidity in the former Ottoman Empire.
Thus my often made point that the best ideas in the world HAVE to consider US domestic political reality as it is, not as we wish it were. You always elide or sidestep that. You can do so. Wilson could not, nor could TR have done so -- nor will future US Presidents be able to do so.
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The people and leaders of the region wanted true independence and we could have indeed championed that endstate, but instead did nothing when Britain and France wrapped a colonial land grab in the cloak of liberty. I suspect we can both agree that if Teddy Roosevelt had won the election of 1912 he would have played the same cards that Wilson was dealt quite differently. Better? Who knows, but certainly he would not have stood idly by feeling "powerless."
Perhaps, I'm not a TR fan -- he was a dangerous meddler also, worse than Wilson in many respects -- but my belief is that he would not have interfered with the events to any significant degree for the same reason -- the US was not interested, no matter how interested, nosy or noisy the transitory Prez of the day happened to be. We were later ill served because TR's cousin happened to get interested, mostly because he had a war to win. Unintended consequences rule many things...
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I think I am on solid ground that the US is indeed well-served by maintaining influence in the Middle East.
I'm sure you do and also know that many agree with you. I and others disagree. Our follies in the ME are mostly induced by American impatience, short-termism and failure to take a long view (yes, that's redundant but the problem is redundantly bad...).
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Our problem is that the manipulative approaches we applied throughout the Cold War to do that are IMO obsolete...
I agree but would extend that back to WW II; we didn't do that very well, either...
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...we have yet to figure out how to maintain influence in less obtrusive ways. We are in an era of transition and there is not playbook.
There are many who have figured out various ways to employ or not to employ influence. Unfortunately, most of those ways have supporters, more or less vociferous and influential and our Congroids listen to all of them and support most -- hard to get a coherent 'policy' with that going on.
IMO, that's a feature, not a bug and it is useful iof considered and employed as a feature and not ignored as a mere minor bug because it is anathema to those who want coherence and a focused policy. The US of A just doesn't do that... :D
A smart Strategos would figure that out, harness it and slowly bring those discordant voices to some harmony. Probably cannot be done on one Watch, Long view again needed... ;)
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What we have done will not work, what we are doing is not working. To do nothing is hardly apt to produce better results.
May, may not. Wouldn't hurt to try. Either way, I think it important to consider that the actions of others will impact whatever we do or do not do and it might be beneficial if we concentrated on things we know we can affect as opposed of trying to affect things the same way on different days when our effect is proven to be less than effective. ;)
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...might prevent these tenuous transitions from escalating horribly out of control in a manner that nudges the shaky economies of the West over the edge.
I think you're attacking the symptom instead of the disease. If the West's economies were in even halfway decent shape, the ME would be a total non-problem (which it almost is anyway...).
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Also, in what world is the suggestion that we are better served by our President or Sec State sitting down in private to talk with leaders such as Assad in the current situation, rather than launching public proclamations from afar for him to stand down as we just did, an example of improper involvement?
Other than, to use an RCJ simile, me banging on your door to yell at you in a loud voice so the neighbors can hear me berating / pleading that you need to stop beating your wife -- with full knowledge that what I'm doing can range from having no effect whatsoever to inciting you to do worse things openly or more discreetly while telling me ever so politely "Thanks, I'll do something..." and either way, making my self look sort of ineffective and thus losing another step in the influence market? That world?
Unintended consequences trump truth and consequence.
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Originally Posted by
Bill Moore
Unless you're suggesting we have no interests in the Middle East and / or that we should become isolationists (perhaps we should, but it seems those who have pushed globalism to the extreme have already won that battle and I don't see how we can turn back at this point), I don't understand how you can claim the ME is almost a non-problem.
In reverse order, no desire for isolationism on my part, more global engagement would be better -- but that engagement should not be led, as it is now, by DoD.
I can and do claim the ME is almost a non-problem for the US -- but that is not necessarily the case for the ME itself, for Europe or those in the far east that need ME oil. The ME becomes a problem for us only in so far as it affects those others AND we clumsily try to ameliorate their concerns. Which is what we're doing and that, alone is why the ME seems to be so important to so many (a number of whose jobs depend on finding crises in which to putter or about which to think...).
I'm personally far from convinced we should be doing that saving the World thing though I acknowledge the Foreign Policy establishment totally disagrees and accept that my opinion is a minority position. I take some small solace in being out in the cold by knowing I've been right on more in the last 50 years or so than they, most, have -- and IMO, they're getting worse, not better...
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From an economic stand point, keeping the oil and gas flowing is vital to a number of economies around the globe, and if say the economy in Italy tanks because it isn't getting gas from Libya, it will damage the Eurozone as a whole, and the world economy as a whole.
Thank you for supporting my point ;) -- the ME is not important to us, it is to others and we have to or want to be seen as being concerned by their concern.
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...Economics is always in our interest, and unfortunately we have tied (perhaps there was no way to avoid it) our economic performance to the overall global performance...
Don't think it could have been or should have been avoided -- BUT what should have happened is that we should have allowed / forced the rest of the world to stand up on their own and not rely on us to fix things. You are correct that the flow of that oil is critical to some; I'm not at all sure that means it is our job to make their critical problem into our problem. It would perhaps be better for us and them if they took care of their problems and we took care of ours.
Not least because we really do NOT do a good job of fixing the problems of others... :rolleyes:
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Politically and culturally we have ties to Israel and the instability in the ME may or may not result in an increased threat to Israel, but it is telling that the Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Egypt have publicly stated they desire to invalidate the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. If Israel is attacked by these States that will impact the U.S. in a number of ways I suspect.
I'm reminded of the words of Secretary of State George Catlett Marshall to Harry Truman in 1948: "Mr. President, I serve at your pleasure but if you recognize Israel, I will not be able to vote for you in the next election."
You've just made another of my oft stated (overstated??? :rolleyes: ) points -- most of our 'foreign' policy is simply US domestic political policy expanded to the minimum amount. That "minimum amount" is always present and causes all sorts of trouble. It gets us into half baked, ill thought out schemes with one eye, one hand and both legs firmly planted in the US and poor attention and minimal effort devoted to ALL the foreign issues (and that same meddling insures there are always plenty of those out there...). That doesn't work and we have sixty recent years of history to prove it.
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In regards to GWOT...
There is no such thing. There is massive over reaction to some events for domestic political purposes. Some good is being done in the ME, SEA and elsewhere but much of it is wheel spinning for effect. Afghanistan at this point comes to mind. Iraq came to mind in 2005 or so; 2003 was necessary IMO, what followed was not. Not at all.
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...if the U.S. doesn't support popular movements (support doesn't need to be anything more than making public statements) in the ME, then we leave an opening for the extremists to do so. We don't want the extremists shaping the narrative, and while they may end up shaping it in the long run...
That's the theory. I disagree. First, public statements not backed up with action create an aura of hypocrisy and the World, quite rightly, does not trust us because we too often say one thing and do another. I'll also point out that our governmental system is chaotic and that means we will always be behind the curve in the information battle unless an existential threat pops up -- Terror as in the "GWO" on is NOT an existential threat. All we have done in trying to get in, keep up and / or win the 'information battle' is make ourselves look like a bunch of chumps. US Governmental incompetence and US Media incompetence simply make efforts to compete worse than doing nothing. The bad guys are going to win that one and while I understand we cannot just concede, we can realize that we will always be the disadvantaged player and adjust accordingly. Stark honesty would be a great first step...
Secondly, supporting popular movements is fraught with problems. We emasculated our Humint capability in the 70s and 80s so we were and still are essentially operating half blind. Thus we know little to nothing about who or what we're supporting (much less why...). Given history since WW II, I submit we'd have been far better off had we not supported popular movements (and a few unpopular ones as well) but have simply been even handed about it and avoided sticking our nose into it with and aiming to influencing who won. In most cases, our true interests were effected little to not at all.
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...or to claim it isn't in our interest just doesn't seem to mesh with the reality of the current global political and economic system.
Now there, I agree with you. Emphasis on "current" and "system." We are the player and victim in a massive case of unintended consequences and the world system that now exists is in large measure a product of US machinations from WW II, through Bretton Woods and the UN. The problem is that in democratic nations, the turnover in politicians adversely impacts planning and follow through ability and in our case, that is particularly acute. We consistently if inadvertently shot ourselves in the foots (plural incidents :D ). Looks like we're determined to continue doing that, the "current system" virtually demands it...
That doesn't mnake it right, just reality -- I'm for rightful reality, m'self.
All that said, we are where we are and the majority that thinks the ME is one of our 'vital interests' has, as you said, won that one. I'm with Bob Jones on recognizing that but saying it did not have to be this way and that we can -- we should -- do better.
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I guess if we ignored all this it would eventually work out in the long run, and it may even work out quicker and for the best if we didn't meddle, but I can the some of the reasons we feel compelled to meddle.
As can I. One big one I see is that our government wide budgeting process seeks thing in which to meddle, our various personnel and personal systems reward meddling and those things won't change much (they can, however, be worked to be advantageous) -- but seeing them is not necessarily believing them...