Middle East landscape rapidly changing

[Itchy]

If the west does nothing Assad has the all clear to say fire 100 gas rockets at a rebel held town or city and kill 10's of thousands in one hit. What would the west do then? Tell him to work away. Right now doing nothing is not an option.

So he's ok to kill another 100,000 just so long as it's not gas
There is no easy solution to this, and as I said before America has backed itself into a position where it's a no-win situation.
Cruise missile strikes may stop further gas attacks, but the killing will continue.

Its not ok but at least its armies fighting armies in a domestic dispute (granted with outside interference) but chemical weapons is a line crossed. I can't believe some of ye don't understand that.

[Denn Forever]

What happened to Iraq when they used Mustard Gas in Halabja ?

[Wildweasel74]

watching 9/11 10 minutes that changed the world on Ch4, even 12yrs on watching the highlights brings it all bck to the day i watched it on TV, America had the worlds sympathy back then, You got ask how Bush mishandling of foreign policy has lead to a bigger mess in the middle east than it bck then and how the European opinion of America`s foreign policy has went from sympathy to outright dislike of America and what they supposedly stand for in general,

[seafoid]

Seafood still refusing to answer the question.

Go on then Itchy. What is the question ?

[Count 10]

If the west does nothing Assad has the all clear to say fire 100 gas rockets at a rebel held town or city and kill 10's of thousands in one hit. What would the west do then? Tell him to work away. Right now doing nothing is not an option.

So he's ok to kill another 100,000 just so long as it's not gas
There is no easy solution to this, and as I said before America has backed itself into a position where it's a no-win situation.
Cruise missile strikes may stop further gas attacks, but the killing will continue.

Its not ok but at least its armies fighting armies in a domestic dispute (granted with outside interference) but chemical weapons is a line crossed. I can't believe some of ye don't understand that.

What you fail to understand is you are just as dead whether killed by gas or a bullet....no amount of sanctimonious shite is going to bring you back. I'm away to bed, seen enough killing to last me 20 lifetimes.

[trileacman]

Seafood still refusing to answer the question.

Go on then Itchy. What is the question ?

Are you supporting Assad? This is the 3rd and final time I'll ask.

Who (with proof) carried out the gas attacks? 2nd warning.

[Arthur_Friend]

Trileacman, who (with proof) carried out the gas attacks?

[seafoid]

Well said Trileacman. If Israel fired chemical weapons into Gaza we'd hear a different reaction on here.

Seafood has me confused. First he wrote this

The rebels are losing the war.
Israel wants a war with Iran.
Assad is Shia like most Iranians
If Assad wins the war Iran will be strengthened.
Israel does not want this.
It's not rocket science.

Then he wrote...

Israel didn't do it....

Is the fact you can't blame Israel short circuiting your brain? You take the opposite position to Israel as default without thinking about the situation yourself.

Itchy

This may be beyond your ability to comprehend

Israel and KSA and the Yanks and the Gulf dictators want to defang Iran.
Iran supports Assad and Hezbollah. They are all Shia.
KSA and the Gulf dictators are Sunni. Look it up.

Israel can't attack Iran without Hezbollah and Assad being taken out first.
Assad is winning the war in Syria.

If this continues Israel won't be able to attack Iran.
The Yanks want to remove Assad. So does Israel .

It's all about Iran.

Israel didn't do it but one of Israel's allies may have to have a casus belli.

Where did you read this fantasy story Seafood, the Jim Corr chronicle. You hate Israel and you see them in everything. I expect you believe they blew up the twin towers, London and they probably shot the pope too. Its impossible to take u serious such is your blind hate.

The simple question I put to you is how would you propose to stop Assad gassing his own people. You seem to favour doing nothing at all (for fear Israel would benefit), I'm sure the innocent Syrian people would be grateful for your ridiculous lessons on middle eastern politics. Its a good job you had no say during ww2 or every Jew would have been wiped out due to inaction.

we have no proof assad did it. I would call a peace conference. Let syrians decide, not qataris or jihadis. Action without planning is pointless btw. And the great powers don't care about.civilians be they ww2 jews or modern arabs or people in the congo.

[trileacman]

Trileacman, who (with proof) carried out the gas attacks?

I stated my case several posts ago to seafoid. He didn't return the favour.

[seafoid]

Seafood still refusing to answer the question.

Go on then Itchy. What is the question ?

Are you supporting Assad? This is the 3rd and final time I'll ask.

Who (with proof) carried out the gas attacks? 2nd warning.

Whoever rules whatever country in the region will be a sonofabitch. Because oil trumps rights. You probably have a car and you like to be able to fill the tank. I think it was the jihadi nusra front with saudi funding to get the yanks involved. Brought to the worlds attention by Israeli intel.

[trileacman]

You dodged the 1st question but I'm tired of asking.

I find your 2nd suggestion devoid of reasoning or evidence, disputed by several of the world's observers on the issue, independent or otherwise. A larger body of evidence would suggest members of the Assad regime are the more likely offenders IMO. That said there is no specifically conclusive proof at this time to rule out either scenario.

Having said all that I maintain my previous point, that when the Palestinians civilians were bombarded with shells we were told by many on this site something must be done. I agreed.

Now the women and children of Syria suffer bombardment with chemical weapons and the men who told us to save the Palestinians tell us we should do nothing. It is hypocrisy and is echoed in the halls of power the world over.

We will do nothing, because it's easier than doing something.

[theskull1]

Only a fool would use weapons that would provoke an international response.

When reasons were needed in the past.....WMD or Gulf of Tonkin ... they were found.

Are you really trying to apply logical thinking to a despot dictator? Have a look at what chubby in North Korea has been at recently. This is in their wheel-house.

Its amazing how these despotic dictators (you do remember Assad was a one time friend of the west) function without the ability to reason and calculate. I'm not prepared to accept that that is true. National leaderships strategise and they will have a reason for whatever they do ( thats not say we'll ever know the real reasons)

[seafoid]

http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/brzezinski-the-syria-crisis-8636

Editor's Note: Following is a TNI interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, former White House national-security adviser under Jimmy Carter and now a counselor and trustee at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a senior research professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. The interview was conducted by Jacob Heilbrunn, TNI senior editor.


Heilbrunn: Here we are five years into the Obama administration, and you're stating that the West is engaging in "mass propaganda." Is Obama being drawn into Syria because he's too weak to resist the status quo? What happened to President Obama that brought us here?

Brzezinski: I can't engage either in psychoanalysis or any kind of historical revisionism. He obviously has a difficult problem on his hands, and there is a mysterious aspect to all of this. Just consider the timing. In late 2011 there are outbreaks in Syria produced by a drought and abetted by two well-known autocracies in the Middle East: Qatar and Saudi Arabia. He all of a sudden announces that Assad has to go—without, apparently, any real preparation for making that happen. Then in the spring of 2012, the election year here, the CIA under General Petraeus, according to The New York Times of March 24th of this year, a very revealing article, mounts a large-scale effort to assist the Qataris and the Saudis and link them somehow with the Turks in that effort. Was this a strategic position? Why did we all of a sudden decide that Syria had to be destabilized and its government overthrown? Had it ever been explained to the American people? Then in the latter part of 2012, especially after the elections, the tide of conflict turns somewhat against the rebels. And it becomes clear that not all of those rebels are all that "democratic." And so the whole policy begins to be reconsidered. I think these things need to be clarified so that one can have a more insightful understanding of what exactly U.S. policy was aiming at.

Heilbrunn: Historically, we often have aided rebel movements—Nicaragua, Afghanistan and Angola, for example. If you're a neocon or a liberal hawk, you're going to say that this is actually aiding forces that are toppling a dictator. So what's wrong with intervening on humanitarian grounds?

Brzezinski: In principle there's nothing wrong with that as motive. But I do think that one has to assess, in advance of the action, the risks involved. In Nicaragua the risks were relatively little given America's dominant position in Central America and no significant rival's access to it from the outside. In Afghanistan I think we knew that Pakistan might be a problem, but we had to do it because of 9/11. But speaking purely for myself, I did advise [then defense secretary Donald] Rumsfeld, when together with some others we were consulted about the decision to go into Afghanistan. My advice was: go in, knock out the Taliban and then leave. I think the problem with Syria is its potentially destabilizing and contagious effect—namely, the vulnerability of Jordan, of Lebanon, the possibility that Iraq will really become part of a larger Sunni-Shiite sectarian conflict, and that there could be a grand collision between us and the Iranians. I think the stakes are larger and the situation is far less predictable and certainly not very susceptible to effective containment just to Syria by American power.

Heilbrunn: Are we, in fact, witnessing a delayed chain reaction? The dream of the neoconservatives, when they entered Iraq, was to create a domino effect in the Middle East, in which we would topple one regime after the other. Is this, in fact, a macabre realization of that aspiration?

Brzezinski: True, that might be the case. They hope that in a sense Syria would redeem what happened originally in Iraq. But I think what we have to bear in mind is that in this particular case the regional situation as a whole is more volatile than it was when they invaded Iraq, and perhaps their views are also infected by the notion, shared by some Israeli right-wingers, that Israel's strategic prospects are best served if all of its adjoining neighbors are destabilized. I happen to think that is a long-term formula for disaster for Israel, because its byproduct, if it happens, is the elimination of American influence in the region, with Israel left ultimately on its own. I don't think that's good for Israel, and, to me, more importantly, because I look at the problems from the vantage point of American national interest, it's not very good for us.

Heilbrunn: You mentioned in an interview, I believe on MSNBC, the prospect of an international conference. Do you think that's still a viable approach, that America should be pushing much more urgently to draw in China, Russia and other powers to reach some kind of peaceful end to this civil war?



Brzezinski
:
I think if we tackle the issue alone with the Russians, which I think has to be done because they're involved partially, and if we do it relying primarily on the former colonial powers in the region—France and Great Britain, who are really hated in the region—the chances of success are not as high as if we do engage in it, somehow, with China, India and Japan, which have a stake in a more stable Middle East. That relates in a way to the previous point you raised. Those countries perhaps can then cumulatively help to create a compromise in which, on the surface at least, no one will be a winner, but which might entail something that I've been proposing in different words for more than a year—namely, that there should be some sort of internationally sponsored elections in Syria, in which anyone who wishes to run can run, which in a way saves face for Assad but which might result in an arrangement, de facto, in which he serves out his term next year but doesn't run again.

Heilbrunn: How slippery is the slope? Obama was clearly not enthusiastic about sending the arms to the Syrian rebels—he handed the announcement off to Ben Rhodes. How slippery do you think this slope is? Do you think that we are headed towards greater American intervention?

Brzezinski:

I'm afraid that we're headed toward an ineffective American intervention, which is even worse. There are circumstances in which intervention is not the best but also not the worst of all outcomes. But what you are talking about means increasing our aid to the least effective of the forces opposing Assad. So at best, it's simply damaging to our credibility. At worst, it hastens the victory of groups that are much more hostile to us than Assad ever was. I still do not understand why—and that refers to my first answer—why we concluded somewhere back in 2011 or 2012—an election year, incidentally—that Assad should go.

Heilbrunn:

Your response earlier about Israel was quite fascinating. Do you think that if the region were to go up into greater upheaval, with a diminution of American influence, Israel would see an opportunity to consolidate its gains, or even make more radical ones if Jordan were to go up in flames?

Brzezinski:

Yes, I know what you're driving at. I think in the short run, it would probably create a larger Fortress Israel, because there would be no one in the way, so to speak. But it would be, first of all, a bloodbath (in different ways for different people), with some significant casualties for Israel as well. But the right-wingers will feel that's a necessity of survival.

But in the long run, a hostile region like that cannot be policed, even by a nuclear-armed Israel. It will simply do to Israel what some of the wars have done to us on a smaller scale. Attrite it, tire it, fatigue it, demoralize it, cause emigration of the best and the first, and then some sort of cataclysm at the end which cannot be predicted at this stage because we don't know who will have what by when. And after all, Iran is next door. It might have some nuclear capability. Suppose the Israelis knock it off. What about Pakistan and others? The notion that one can control a region from a very strong and motivated country, but of only six million people, is simply a wild dream.


Heilbrunn: I guess my final question, if you think you can get into this subject, is . . . you're sort of on the opposition bank right now. The dominant voice among intellectuals and in the media seems to be a liberal hawk/neoconservative groundswell, a moralistic call for action in Syria based on emotion. Why do you think, even after the debacle of the Iraq War, that the foreign-policy debate remains quite skewed in America?

Brzezinski: (laughs) I think you know the answer to that better than I, but if I may offer a perspective: this is a highly motivated, good country. It is driven by good motives. But it is also a country with an extremely simplistic understanding of world affairs, and with still a high confidence in America's capacity to prevail, by force if necessary. I think in a complex situation, simplistic solutions offered by people who are either demagogues, or are smart enough to offer their advice piecemeal; it's something that people can bite into. Assuming that a few more arms of this or that kind will achieve what they really desire, which is a victory for a good cause, without fully understanding that the hidden complexities are going to suck us in more and more, we're going to be involved in a large regional war eventually, with a region even more hostile to us than many Arabs are currently, it could be a disaster for us. But that is not a perspective that the average American, who doesn't really read much about world affairs, can quite grasp. This is a country of good emotions, but poor knowledge and little sophistication about the world.

Heilbrunn: Well, thank you. I couldn't agree more.

[Itchy]

That is fascinating seafood. A man with an opinion interviews a man with the same opinion and they find at the end they agree. Now how about answering a few questions for yourself instead of pasting tonnes of regurgitated articles. 

[seafoid]

That is fascinating seafood. A man with an opinion interviews a man with the same opinion and they find at the end they agree. Now how about answering a few questions for yourself instead of pasting tonnes of regurgitated articles.

Well Itchy just follow the news for the next few years and see what happens.
Do you think it's all beer and skittles trying to keep a lid on the people of the Middle East?
Did you ever wonder why the region is so volatile?