Syria under Bashir Assad (closed end 2014)

[Bill Moore]

Crowbat

While I agree with some of your ideas about pluralism, better alternatives, etc., those ideas are not ideas that "we" can put into practice for others. It is sort of like the super model who looks good on the cover of a magazine after considerable air brushing, but when you see in person she is not much more than a plain Jane. There is a gap between the ideas you're proposing we pursue and the means to do so.

Where I principally disagree with you is that you seem to assume that if we do X then Y will happen. The real world doesn't work that way, there are many factors influencing the outcome of situation beyond what we do. All to often we have to relearn that lesson. Our actions are not necessarily going to be deterministic, they'll just be part of a larger whole. Providing support to various so called moderate insurgent groups could work in our favor, may not have any effect, and could backfire on us. To assume we have perfect control of the outcomes is hubris. We have to make educated assumptions on probable outcomes, and consider if the worst case happens is the risk worth the potential gain?

If we knew how Iraq was going to turn out, do you think Congress would have supported it if we could all go back in time? Some predicted what would happen in Iraq quite accurately, but that doesn't mean they knew. They made an educated assumption. Others assumed we could easily defeat Saddam's military (we did), and then the people would embrace as liberators and they would welcome democracy (they didn't). We learned that there was considerable tension between the ethnic groups, we learned Iran gained considerable sway with the Shia community, we learned that removing all the Ba'athists resulted basically in removing any semblance of governance, opening up control of the state/or sub-regions to a wide range of actors competing for control. Most importantly I hoped we learned the world will do things we don't anticipate, and there are no easy wars where the outcome is certain.

Indeed: 'state-building before it provides growing ground for extremism'.

That is the theory, but it is important to note that others are competing with us to build their version of a state. Unless we completely bring an adversary to their knees, which we haven't done since WWII it is unlikely we'll be able to build a state. We can help the locals build their state, but if there isn't a common vision for what that state should look like between the warring parties then state building will continue to be a distant dream outside the realm of reality.

Let's consider the latest (known to me) example of an 'intervention' (of sort) in one of countries in question: removal of famous Prince Bandar from his post as Chief of Saudi Intel.

Frustrated by Obama's indecision on Syria, Bandar became a vocal propagator of the idea 'Saudis are going to do all it on their own'. I'm too lazy to search for all the possible links, but '5 minutes of googling' should be enough to find out that as of autumn 2012 and through early 2013, certain papers were full of statements by various Saudi ambassadors essentially stating the same, plus reports about massive Saudi purchases of specific arms for insurgents (usually such that could be obtained only from one source, which was motivated with the idea that should any end in 'wrong hands', these wrong hands couldn't get spares and ammo for them).

First off I have no idea if we facilitated the removal of Bandar, but even if we did that doesn't mean we can facilitate good governance. We probably just paid someone off to get rid of someone we didn't like. That doesn't change the culture of a government.

It is certainly worth surfacing all ideas for consideration, but we should also be critical and realistic about each idea. If we decide to pursue it, fine but we have to watch for signs it isn't working and have back up plans and adjust as needed. Although we preach this, I have seldom seen it done.

[CrowBat]

...Where I principally disagree with you is that you seem to assume that if we do X then Y will happen. The real world doesn't work that way...

Perhaps it does, perhaps not.

If we follow what's said by that gent who said he was ordered to go to the elected pres of Ecuador, and tell him he either has to follow US instructions and - between others - indebt the country forever by taking development loans from the World Bank, or he's going to get assassinated (and this happened just a few months later)... then sorry, but yes, we have to assume that if 'we' do X then Y will happen.

(And 'we' can only be the USA, then here in the EU we don't have strong, united foreign policy that would matter on international plan and be supported with the use of force as necessary, but 27 sets of entirely different commercial interests supported by lame and slowly applied economic sanctions.)

Translated to the ME, characters like Abdullah know all too well how dependable on Western support for their survival they all are, and that's why they shut up when said to shut up. All provided somebody comes to the idea to tell them to shut up - instead 'bowing - to tie shoelaces, of course'...

And regarding 'many factors': fact is that sanctions like travel bans (i.e. a la 'you'll not go to Geneva to drown yourself in cognac, buy yourself 1001st Rolex and enjoy Ukrainian whores until you order your police and intel to finally stop all the private donations for AQ and similar idiots') are really easy to impose. They would hit the selected few, 1000% sure and send a strong signal that proverbial sh!t has hit the fan and enough is now enough.

Anything is better but hushing up such facts like FBI's findings that the wife of the Saudi ambassador financed the 9/11 idiots (and I don't want to know what kind of possible connections can be found behind bombings in London or in Madrid; not only that local intels imposed extremely strict bans on any kind of relevant reporting but it's a 'historic fact' that such affairs are even easier to hush up here in the EU).

If we knew how Iraq was going to turn out, do you think Congress would have supported it if we could all go back in time?

Iraq is, IMHO, an extremely rare, very special case - where the entire nation went after an idiotic president like a flock of sheep follows its shepherd into a slaughter.

Frankly Bill, I was monitoring what was going on back then 'front row, legs free' as we say it here, and simply couldn't believe what's going on. Until then, I could never imagine Americans going that 'retard'. There was no sane discussion of pros and cons, no argumentation, no critique, nothing. Even within the IC it was like in a church with worshipers repeating dogmas and reciting in trance, 'The president said, the SecState said, the MOD said, the president said, and amen...'

The entire affair stood in absolutely no relation to 9/11, yet everybody was happy to forget what was all the uproar about - and plunge into that catastrophe too. Perhaps it's really so that in such cases your nation functions like broken software, and whenever in doubt wants back to mama. It's definitely so that when facing a hard-to-determine sort of threat, it selected a kind of enemy that was much easier to determine...

Now, whether everybody there was bribed, or so shocked by 9/11 that nobody could see further than the tip of one's nose... no clue. But, like I mentioned in my post above, it's tragic that even 13 years later nobody learned anything about Islamic extremism at all. The only difference is that nowadays every conflict with potential involvement of the USA is seen through the prism of that 'Iraq mistake'.

Some predicted what would happen in Iraq quite accurately, but that doesn't mean they knew. They made an educated assumption.

Sorry, nah. The people I happen to know have clearly said things like, 'well, beg your pardon, but all that's missing are 100kg of Sarin, that's a clear matter of fact - and Curveball is bull-####ting'. The only thing such people couldn't believe was how short their careers became, and how fast they found themselves on receiving end of utterly destroying defamation campaigns.

So, no 'educated guessing' there: that was a 'system error', the decision taken was completely wrong and against any better advice - and all of that was clear right from the start.

First off I have no idea if we facilitated the removal of Bandar...

Admittedly, what I mentioned above is my theory, an 'educated guess' if you like - also based on 'uproar' it caused within specific circles of the Saudi military: but, sigh, the timing was EXTREMELY strange, simply too much to be an 'accident'.

Overall Bill: such 'things' are doable, and not only 'seldom'. It's just about what 'things' the US decides to do, and what not.