Luttwak piece in Foreign Policy
It's likely that many of you have already seen the following piece:
Quote:
Always bureaucratically adept, even if operationally incompetent in far too many cases, the CIA already has the Washington end of the action. But if weapons are to be supplied, it is essential to call on the only Americans who can tell the difference between Sunni bad guys who only want to oppress other Syrians and the really bad guys who happen to be waging their global jihad in Syria. What's needed are true experts, people who really speak the region's Arabic: the regular U.S. Army and Marine Corps officers who successfully sponsored and then effectively controlled the Sunni tribal insurgents in Iraq whose "awakening" defeated the jihadists who were attacking U.S. troops.
This sort of splits the difference between the Coindinista/Cointra argument but only at its very edges. Certain skills are useful in retention, it seems, but a civil war with the US supporting one side is something altogether different than a colonial pacification.
This is above my head, so interested in thoughts on the piece.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...syria?page=0,1
Fracture Lines: The Evaluating the Possibility of a Sectarian Future for Syria
Fracture Lines: The Evaluating the Possibility of a Sectarian Future for Syria
Entry Excerpt:
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Did we all read the same paper?
Luttwak states that he thinks the entire thing is a bad idea, but some military aid is now official policy.
I thought he was just talking about vetting groups, not literally trying to recreate Anbar.
Quote:
It was for several good and solid reasons that U.S. President Barack Obama's administration long resisted pressures to intervene more forcefully in Syria's civil war. To start with, there is the sheer complexity of a conflict at the intersection of religious, ethnic, regional, and global politics, as illustrated by the plain fact that the most Westernized of Syrians (including its Christians) support the Assad government that the United States seeks to displace, while its enemies are certainly not America's friends and, indeed, include the most dangerous of Muslim extremists. But no matter: After two years of restraint, the administration -- having decided to send "direct military assistance" to the rebels -- has chosen sides and is now choosing sides within sides.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...g_rebels_syria
Quote:
It is now argued most authoritatively that U.S. President Barack Obama's failure to act decisively to remove Bashar al-Assad's regime from power in Syria is explained by internal divisions within his administration, miscalculations about the balance of power on the ground, and the president's own irresolution. There is another explanation, however: that the Obama administration is showing calculated restraint induced by bitter experience and, even more, by the overriding strategic priority of disengaging from the Islamic arc of conflict to better engage with China.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...d_enough_alone
One comment I've read frequently is "if only we had intervened earlier, things would be different", the moderate opposition would be the main fighters and there would be no radicals involved.
I don't see why people think that, earlier intervention doesn't preclude others arming competing groups. Once violence is unleashed, it's hard to predict the outcome.
Ken White (he hasn't posted in a while, hope he's well) used to get it just right: most of what we do overseas is almost reactionary and based on domestic politics.