Well, JMA, here goes:
Dayuhan pretty much covers it.
As best I can understand it, you believe that (Point A) launching a few cruise missiles, perhaps in conjunction with some raids by special ops forces, will result in (Point B) an end to the violence and the replacement of the Assad regime with one that will have some probability of being a representative, participatory government.
After offering your two or three cruise missile solution, you were asked to discuss planning, execution, consequences and likely outcomes, all in the context of local, regional and global actors and their interests.
What we've received in response has been insults about anything and everything, directed at nearly everyone, having only the constant thread of assertions of your brilliance. At the same time, your posts show remarkably poor skill at responding to the substance of others posts, instead responding to what you wanted them to have written. (I was very surprised at how far back I had to go in this thread to find any substantive post from you.)
In the U.S., when someone presents a course of action (point A) and a desired outcome (point B), without any discussion of the current situation, the effects of the plan or the full range of potential outcomes and consequences, we refer to it as "magical thinking." It's not a compliment.
I don't respond to many of your posts because I learned to ignore playground taunts around the age of 10. Other than that, your posts have little substance: "there's no there, there."
Which is one of many questions you should probably answer (absent gratuitous insults to all and sundry and the unproven assertions of your own brilliance) if you want any credibility as a serious participant.
Last edited by J Wolfsberger; 03-09-2012 at 04:57 PM.
John Wolfsberger, Jr.
An unruffled person with some useful skills.
Well, doom predictions about the impending outbreak of chaos always remind me of the tired Hollywood fiction that you need to keep people ignorant of an impending disaster in order to "avoid panic".
Let's face it; the assumption that chaos would break out (for any serious duration) is what result you get if you switch your brain first into sleep mode and then ask it for a prediction.
There's no real intellect, knowledge or originality required for such a conclusion. It's simple the arch-conservative basic instinct at work - the one that tells people that all deviation from the status quo is creepy.
From the article:
Which, I think, summarizes what many of us have been saying.And as painful as it is to watch, the wrenching reality of a brutal dictator killing his own people isn't a compelling enough reason to justify a unilateral, open-ended American military intervention to topple him.
...
But the notion that we should intercede quickly with some dramatic, ill-advised, poorly thought through idea of kill zones or safe havens without thinking through the consequences of what protecting those areas would entail is a prescription for disaster.
Intervening militarily now isn't about left or right, liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, or even about right or wrong -- it's really about choosing between being dumb or smart.
I'm not sure I agree that the assumption that chaos will break out is silly. But I'm reasonably sure that if we do nothing, the current situation in Syria will resolve itself the way such things typically do: those in rebellion will be killed or cowed into submission, and everyday life will, over the course of a few years, revert to the status quo.
As I've written above, if the Syrian people want a different outcome, they're the ones who will have to achieve it. If the other Arab countries want a different outcome, they have the aircraft, tanks, artillery, guns, troops, etc. to try and bring it about. The only thing the intervention of the "Great Satan" can achieve is giving everyone a foreigner to focus their hate on.
John Wolfsberger, Jr.
An unruffled person with some useful skills.
Thanks but such paternalism is neither necessary nor warranted.You have put some time and effort into this so I will be gentle.
Yes, when isn't that the case? I don't see how that is relevant to my analysis.I ask you again to start at the beginning.
It is the politicians who decide to intervene and generally place a whole string of limitations on such intervention....
Have you heard of contingency planning? Maybe it's different in your neck of the woods, but I've participated in lots of planning for contingencies that were unlikely to materialize for whatever reason. In fact the vast majority of war and contingency plans I participated in were never executed. Again, not sure how this is relevant to anything I wrote.So all that said ... don't plan for options you at your level will not be asked to decide on.
andSo if a guardian angel starts to take out 1,000s of the bad guys (being from Assad's political and military hierarchy) is not the same as killings civilians (men, women, children) in Homs with artillery, mortars, armour and then by firing squad.
If you look at the problem only from a short-term, tactical perspective, then yes, stopping the killing appears to be a straightforward goal. And just to be clear I do think that stopping the killing is both noble and righteous and should seriously be considered. My default position i that I want to do something about it. However, experience has taught me that it is, unfortunately, not possible to put such "tactical" political goals in a nice little box and isolate them from everything else that is going on to include the longer-term effects of expediently satisfying the short-term goal. Looking at the potential long-term and "big picture" effects and how things might play out was the purpose of my post.Sadly though he seems to have influenced your thinking because you come up with this: "None of these options sound very good to me and they would all involve killing a lot of Syrians, not protecting them." So think it through again I suggest and understand that to save Syrian civilians a lot of "bad guys" are going to have to be killed.
Secondly, while the political goal my appear simple, the execution is not straightforward since it's not easy to distinguish the "good" guys from the "bad" guys and civilian deaths can't be completely avoided. Therefore, any intervention is very likely going to carry a cost in civilian deaths caused by the intervening force. Depending on the type and scope of the intervention, and how things turn out, an intervention could easy kill more civilians than are "saved." The military instrument is quite blunt when it comes to "saving" civilians.
My post was a combination of facts, analysis, judgment and opinion. If you didn't like the opinion part, then feel free to ignore it.Finally I suggest that your "gut feel" is not what counts here.
My deductions and conclusions were not "plucked" out of thin air. They were arrived at through my "discussion of factors" and are not merely my "opinion."When you arrive at what you think will or won't work consider the basis on which you arrived at that decision. In appreciations the deductions and conclusions are not 'plucked' out of the air but are arrived at through your discussion of factors. So "in my opinion" and "but I think" and "the odds are" have no place in an appreciation.
Supporting "time-limited, scope limited military actions" for 20 years.
Yes, but the opposite conclusion suffers from the same problem. Generally it's bad form to make grandiose predictions about what might happen absent some serious analysis and supporting arguments. With respect to Syria there are some good reasons to expect a civil war and not an orderly transition, but there is a lot of uncertainty over what would/could happen.
Supporting "time-limited, scope limited military actions" for 20 years.
Not sure if it's been posted here yet, but here is some more "big picture" analysis from Mark Safranski.
Supporting "time-limited, scope limited military actions" for 20 years.
Thanks for the pointer.
andThe problem is not intervention per se but an otherworldly posture of Western policy makers that embraces tactical geopolitics – i.e. each intervention (Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq), undertaken whenever chance arises somehow exists on it’s own terms, in splendid isolation. It doesn’t, except in NATO capitols.
I've heard several Russian Generals, politicians and academicians speaking on Voice of Russia describe the U.S. as an international bully, going from country to country and kicking out any government that displeases us in order to replace it with a puppet of our making. To them, NATO is nothing more than the tool the American Empire uses to add the troops of supplicant allies to our own.We are now the ones backing others into corners. Iran, North Korea, Syria, Zimbabwe and other states ruled by kleptocrats and monsters act as buffers for China and Russia. Aside from the benefits these failed states can bring as customers for military hardware or sellers of raw materials, the attention of Western statesmen and human rights activists are diverted by the cause du jour in these hellholes, rather than being focused on what Beijing and Moscow might be up to at home or abroad. Every dismantling of an anti-Western dictatorship, from their perspective, is a step closer to their direct confrontation with the West’s hyperactive, erratic, morally hypocritical, meddling, ruling elite who will be no more able to ignore “grave injustices” in Wuhai or Kazan than they could in Aleppo or Benghazi.
I don't think this is propaganda tossed out for domestic consumption. This is the way the world looks from Moscow.
Since Syria is their last ally in the region, it seems safe to assume that any U.S./NATO/European involvement to topple Assad would almost certainly be met with a strong Russian effort to keep him in power.
John Wolfsberger, Jr.
An unruffled person with some useful skills.
Finding the victim of this defamation takes but a little effort.from JMA
Next I would like to comment on that (idiotic) quote from that Marine officer. (I hope he is a Lt at most otherwise the USMC is in a lot of trouble) ... So ignore that idiot Marine officer.
First, we find Rick's original post:
Lt. Billy Birdzell turns up in 2004 aka 1st.Lt. William Birdzell, in Dick Camp's Battle for the City of the Dead: In the Shadow of the Golden Dome, Najaf, August 2004, at page 94 (Birdzell .pdf attached).Why Syria feels different from Libya
Posted By Thomas E. Ricks Wednesday, February 15, 2012
I've been wondering why I advocated NATO intervention in Libya but don't feel the same way about Syria. I had thought it was because I thought all Qaddafi needed was a good shove, while Syria is more complex.
But I got this note from Billy Birdzell, who was a Marine officer with Special Ops experience and two tours in Iraq who went off and got an MBA (and if you know someone in the DC area who could use that sort of background, let me know and I will forward the note to him). He wrote that, "Killing several thousand Syrians so they don't kill several thousand other Syrians only to leave the nation knowing that several thousand more will die is not protecting anyone."
That strikes me as pretty succinct. It's one thing to provide the means to help finish off a reeling dictator. It is another to wade into a civil war.
See also, a related two part article by Col. Camp which starts in Leatherneck Magazine - December 2010; and e.g., Zenith Press, Military Snapshot - A Tank's-eye View in Najaf, Iraq:
And, in the April 2007 Marine Gazette, as Capt. William Birdzell for his award winning article. The article was noted at this SWC post:Looking through a tank driver's view port down a debris-laden street in Najaf. Note the barrel of the tank's 120mm cannon. Photo courtesy of 1st Lt. William Birdzell, USMC, from Battle for the City of the Dead by Col. Dick Camp.
Some here may know him personally - It's a small Corps.... April 2007, "For what are we ready?", by Capt William Birdzell
In the conclusion, he notes the five great improvements of the 20th century as amphibious assault, close air support, vertical envelopment, tank blitz, and parachute operations. He credits the Marine Corps with the first three and the Germans with the rest.
I stand by the Marine who was defamed.
Regards
Mike
Such predictions of doom and gloom or the opposite made unsupported by facts is always dangerous if they are used as a basis for decision making around a military intervention.
Intelligent people will indeed realise this danger.
I have no access to current intel on Syria so I will just stick to a position that the longer the internal strife is allowed to continue the more people (combatants and civilians) will be killed both before and after the the current regime falls. The quicker the regime's butchery is brought to an end the less the need for vengeance there will be.
Arming the opposition will prolong the violence and provide the means to exert payback after the regime collapses.
Oh here we go then... happy to hear from the horses mouth why his (the following statement) is not totally idiotic:
He is so wide of the mark it is obvious he has not thought the whole issue carefully through."Killing several thousand Syrians so they don't kill several thousand other Syrians only to leave the nation knowing that several thousand more will die is not protecting anyone."
I must admit that I am mostly in agreement with the sentiments expressed in the document Presidential Study Directive on Mass Atrocities
It has a clear opening statement as follows:
Dated August 04, 2011 with a 120 day to commence work deadline. Has it made the deadline, who knows? Will it ever be more than a talk-shop, who knows.Preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States.
But what it does is makes it clear that preventing mass atrocities is in the nation interest of the US. Good, so now the world knows what the current Administration sees as being in National Interest... so let there be no more of the nonsense around here that action envisaged in terms of the above document not being in the US national interest unless prefixed with "in my personal opinion".
Staggering arrogance... he ends with:
So if you agree with him (don't support intervention) you are smart but if you don't (by supporting intervention) you are dumb.Intervening militarily now isn't about left or right, liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, or even about right or wrong -- it's really about choosing between being dumb or smart.
Pity because there was some good content in that piece.
Found a wonderful quote to support the above comment of mine:
A mans got to do what a mans got to do to look after that pension."The Joint Chiefs of Staff-a group who, in my opinion, cannot be matched for arrogance when the wind is blowing their way or for a quality of abject ass-kissing when it is not." Joseph Alsop in “I've Seen the Best of It" - page 300
Russia has been consistent in its opposition to the creation of a European missile defense shield. Concessions have been made, it is true, but the project has not been abandoned. Given that the likelihood of the creation of an effective missile defense shield is somewhere between the likelihood of discovering a cure for AIDS and the successful manufacture of a time machine (in all seriousness, it’s a pipe dream) one can understand why the Russians might view its continued pursuit as a recipe and possibly even a euphemism for escalation.
So here you have the Russians with a not totally unfounded concern in regards to the nuclear balance of power. It so happens that their sole Mediterranean port is in Syria. Anyone who thinks a nation in that situation is not going to do everything in its power—which in this case amounts to no more than (not) casting a vote—to block a U.N. resolution which calls for regime change in Syria is on crack.
If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed. – Mark Twain (attributed)
I have watched the exchange on this thread for the last few days with interest tinged by concern that it has become a "ding, dong".
This has been reinforced by a concerned SWC member's comment:Having just read through the exchange I could delete or edit down posts, that will lose some of the value and obscure how I reached this position.It is this back and forth that most folks do not want to have to weed through to get the real valuable nuggets. SWC should adopt the US prosecutor's motto - Without Passion or Prejudice....just the facts...and some well supported conclusions.
So everyone please from now on discuss the issues and:Posts that do not conform will be treated robustly within SWC rules.just the facts...and some well supported conclusions.
davidbfpo
I confess to not having read all of the posts on this thread. But to be clear, JMA you support an intervention just not by the USA?
A policy statement like this:
is likely to be badly misinterpreted if taken in isolation. The key context here is the same administration's repeated rejection of unilateral action, and repeated statements making multilateralism a core element of foreign policy. With that context, what you get is a statement that while the US gets very very upset over mass atrocities and genocide, any action to stop them has to be multilateral.Preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States.
A cynic might say that with that context the statement quoted above is degraded to the point where it's little more than sound bite.
A couple of comments on comments...
It's certainly true that there is no certainty that chaos would break out if Assad were removed (assuming he could be neatly removed, another subject). It's equally impossible to state with certainty that chaos wold not break out if Assad were removed. There are circumstances present that incline toward chaos: lack of an established succession process, a history of repressive minority rule, concentration of coercive force in the hands of a minority with a great deal to lose from majority control, an abundance of neighbors meddling to advance their own interests. None of this means that chaos is certain, but it means chaos is a significant possibility that has to be factored into any plan.Let's face it; the assumption that chaos would break out (for any serious duration) is what result you get if you switch your brain first into sleep mode and then ask it for a prediction.
The assumption that there would be chaos would be unsupportable, but an assumption that there would not be chaos would be downright absurd and potentially extremely irresponsible... I guess we all remember Paul Wolfowitz claiming that the forces needed to secure Iraq couldn't possibly exceed those needed to take Iraq.
We can't be certain that removing Assad (again, assuming we can) would produce chaos, but I don't think anyone would deny that it's a strong possibility that needs to be factored into any plan. You can't be certain that sticking your head in a crocodile's mouth will result in being bitten. That's a poor reason to go and do it.
If the opposition has the capacity to collapse the regime, it has the capacity to go for payback. The two go together, unless we propose that the regime be collapsed purely by external action. Any such proposal cannot be taken seriously without a clear description of what action is proposed and why it's expected to produce the desired results.Arming the opposition will prolong the violence and provide the means to exert payback after the regime collapses.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
Bookmarks