tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52730763489382633082024-02-06T20:00:58.529-08:00insufficient respectMichael Neumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01558892758943318577noreply@blogger.comBlogger115125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273076348938263308.post-63341602303642862242023-06-06T23:33:00.001-07:002023-06-26T00:17:42.393-07:00Justice in Defeat: For Syrians, what now?<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">Assad, a monster, has
won. He has a firm grasp on all major
cities and ports: Aleppo, Damascus,
Hama, Homs, Tartus. He has enough
control of even the most restive regions, the Daraa and Sweida Governates, to ensure
his survival. His lack of control near
the Turkish border is a mere annoyance.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">No military force poses any
threat to him, not least because no regional or international power has any desire
to unseat him. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He knows that he has
nothing to fear from the US and its subservient ‘allies’. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For one thing, they want him in power because
they fear Islamists would replace him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For
another, were there the will to unseat him, there isn’t the way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The West has the military means to crush him,
but those means are unusable for domestic political reasons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To unseat him and destroy the r</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">égime
would require a long-term commitment of</span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"> hundreds of thousands of ground troops.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No Western government would dare to propose
any such thing to their electorates. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Assad and the whole world
know this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They saw US ‘coalitions’
first effectively deliver Iraq to Iranian proxies, and then suffer humiliating
expulsion from Afghanistan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Clawing back
his territory inch by inch, Assad has never wavered in his determination to
repel forces that once </span><a href="https://www.dw.com/en/relentless-bombing-forces-syrian-rebels-and-civilians-from-damascus-stronghold/a-38835847"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">occupied</span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"> </span><a href="https://tcf.org/content/commentary/syrias-rebels-lose-symbolic-stronghold/"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">districts</span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"> of
greater Damascus.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">The few who predicted this,
two or three years after the outbreak of the Syrian revolution, were condemned
as blinded by cynical prejudice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
they were right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The defeat is no less real
for all the objections raised by those in denial.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It does not matter that the country is in
ruins: so were some victorious nations in 1918 or 1945.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It does not matter if Assad exists at the
good pleasure of Russia, Iran and, if the truth be told, the US and Israel. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It does not matter that, given the support or
connivance of these external powers, it was never a fair fight. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It does not matter that, in the minds of some
powerless expats, ‘the struggle continues’. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The reality is that Assad has obtained his
objectives, and the rebels have not, nor have they any prospect of attaining
theirs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>None of this is likely to
change, unless it be in Assad's favour.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This is apparent in the current push to normalize relations with his
régime.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">In this grim situation, some
Assad opponents seem fully occupied with their outrage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They fail to address the most pressing
question:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>what can be done for Syrians,
not only those who live a miserable existence in fragile, imperfect refuge from
Assad's operations, but also those who must live fully within his grasp.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">For those fully outside
Assad's reach, the answers are clear:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>they are refugees.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The ways to
help refugees are well-known.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If there
is a big gap between knowing what should be done and seeing it is done, at
least there is no mystery about making progress towards the objectives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And some work tirelessly to achieve these
goals.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">But what of those who must
live in areas under his control, or in areas where he still can inflict
atrocities on those he detests?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These
amount to <a href="https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/syria-pariah-state/">millions</a>
of innocent people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And once the
realities of defeat are taken into account, their prospects are even worse,
much worse, than normally supposed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That's because Assad and his régime will almost certainly continue to
commit atrocities well into the foreseeable future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since he has won, why wouldn’t he?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There will be thousands more victims, perhaps
some yet unborn.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Picture a determined
opponent of the Syrian régime, looking for a course of action with some chance
of putting an end to this catastrophe – to overthrow Assad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is hard to imagine anyone coming up with a
winning strategy today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Assad’s
opponents must now operate from a position of weakness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Winning strategies would therefore have to
come from a close watch on current realities, and a search for whatever
opportunities the future may hold.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Unfortunately most of what
we hear today about Syria has nothing to do with some future attempt to
overthrow Assad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It isn’t even aimed at helping
Syrians living under his rule.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead of
strategic thinking, we hear moralizing, dreams of vengeance and other varieties
of wishful thinking, all wrapped up in talk of justice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it is just talk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It has little to do with justice in any
real-world sense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It has little to do
with even an <i>intention</i> to alleviate the suffering or restore the rights
of the Syrian people.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Western media have - The New
York Times, The Washington Post, the Guardian, and more centrist outlets like
CNN - have been sympathetic to the Syrian revolution since its outbreak in
2011. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But this support has a particular
slant. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There have been admiring
portrayals of the <i>democratic</i> Syrian opposition - the Westernized,
secular or liberal Muslim activists and politicians, the artists, the writers,
overwhelmingly non-military figures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There have been respectful accounts of brave journalists who bring back
the news from these unthreatening sectors of the opposition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is much investigative work, documenting
Assad’s atrocities and arguing, at great length, with those seeking to deflect
guilt from the régime.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In defeat, these
investigations tend to turn away from the present and towards the past.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Opposition has become, more and more, a
matter of analysis and indignant commentary.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">These efforts must at some
point have had a role in the condemnations issued by important Western
institutions – in official government statements, legislated sanctions like the
American Caesar act, international arrest warrants, and the degradation of
diplomatic relations with the Syrian régime.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>These developments are sometimes described as victories, triumphs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed you can find defenses of Assad only in
the ever-insignificant American left.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Yet Assad is no less a
victor for all these declarations, researches, loud condemnations and dramatic gestures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not one of his captive subjects is any better
off or more protected by this incessant outpouring of cruelly empty
‘support’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not one of them is helped by elegant
commentators offering acidic observations about Gulf State, Egyptian or
Jordanian, even Turkish cynicism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
‘support’ has indeed produced some results – the sanctions, the international
indictments, the refusals to normalize.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s
just that the results are valueless, as is the entire effort that produced
them.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">This does not mean that
trying to help the Syrian people is hopeless.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It means that no one so much as contemplates the decisions that might
offer some hope. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead, we have moralizers
pontificating as if they were victors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They pretend to mistake Assad, a victorious sovereign, for a hunted
criminal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They scorn the prospect of
allies who do not espouse their high principles or standards of behaviour.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This refusal to back Assad’s most dangerous
enemies helped him wreak his atrocities during his battles. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It continues to do so. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">It’s only when this moralistic
fantasizing is thoroughly discredited that it will become possible even to
think about stopping Assad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That means
grasping the futility of attempts to bring him to justice, or to cement his
isolation on the international stage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What follows describes the absurdity pursuing these goals from a
position of defeat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then it becomes
clear that any chance to weaken the Syrian régime has to involve its strongest regional
opponents – Turkey and the Islamist militias in Idlib – whatever their moral
failings.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">I will examine first the
attempts to make the régime pay for its past atrocities, and then the measures
designed to weaken Assad.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Justice<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">The current campaigns for
justice aim address two horrors – Assad’s human rights violations and his war
crimes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The prospects of success in
these ventures are, at most, negligible.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Human rights violations<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">The nicely calibrated, meticulously
implemented version of justice popular among Assad’s Western opponents is
entirely incapable of making a dent in the criminality so deeply entrenched
within the Assadist régime.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Yes, a handful of incautious
régime emigrants and government officials are captured and and judged.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This simply has no relationship to the </span><a href="https://snhr.org/blog/2013/05/10/blatant-ethnic-cleansing-in-syria"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">scale</span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"> or
character of the injustices supposedly being addressed.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">The official Syrian Security
Services, responsible for most of the torture and murder, number around
120,000, not counting presumably thousands of informers, not counting the
secretive and fearsome Air Force Branch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The unbridled viciousness of these forces is not some secret, recently
revealed by plucky investigators.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Indeed, Human Rights Watch issued a </span><a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2010/07/16/wasted-decade/human-rights-syria-during-bashar-al-asads-first-ten-years-power"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">report</span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">
decrying the situation <i>the year before the start of the Syrian uprising.</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Syria's security services were notorious at
least back to 1980, when Tadmor (Palmyra) prison became the scene of a
well-known massacre.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For those with even
longer memories, there was the brutal terror of essentially the same régime in
the </span><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/program/al-jazeera-world/2017/3/15/syria-the-roots-of-tyranny"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">mid-1950</span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">s.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">This brutality bore no
resemblance to the Nazis' intermittent efforts to conceal their crimes, much
less with any "I was only following orders" protests of the Nazi torturers
and their complicit bureaucrats.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the
contrary, the security services were happy to make their cruelty known.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So here is a state of affairs where the
quasi-totality of 120,000 personnel were significantly involved, especially
according to the current norms about complicity in such crimes.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">This ongoing horror has all
taken place within a r</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">égime</span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"> that has beaten off the most determined
revolutionaries, and which learned from Obama that it has nothing to fear from
Western military intervention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Out of
120,000, a dozen or so security force criminals have been foolhardy enough to
get themselves brought to trial in Western Europe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The idea that this constitutes even a hint of
justice for the victims is absurd.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
idea that these arrests might be some harbinger of a deterrent effect is, well,
a descent into madness.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">War crimes<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">The same impunity that
applies to Assad's torturers, also applies to his war crimes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It must not be thought that these were the
top-down strategies of a sophisticated military power, like the gas warfare of
World War I or the Allied bombings of Axis cities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Syrian army is probably capable of
sophistication, but the war crimes it committed beginning in 2012 did not, for
the most part, have that character.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a
brilliant </span><a href="https://carnegie-mec.org/2016/03/10/strength-in-weakness-syrian-army-s-accidental-resilience/iuz7"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">piece</span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"> by Kheder
Khaddour, the Syrian army emerges as something like a corrupt bureaucracy, divided
into localized fiefs that react to threats with considerable flexibility and
autonomy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This has much to do with who
is responsible for the crimes that some, dreaming about justice, imagine
prosecuting.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">The main crimes attributable
to these Syrian armed forces are massacres, poison gas attacks, and barrel
bombings. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">The <i>massacres</i> have
been carried out by thugs belonging to roaming militias.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These <i>shabiha</i> are sometimes
steroid-crazed monsters, slitting throats with huge garish knives or
perpetrating other atrocities. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They
sometimes act in cooperation with Syrian army units, but not as Syrian army
members.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">The <i>gas attacks</i> are
carried out by Syrian army members, or possibly allied forces with access to
Syrian army stockpiles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is not clear
how high in the army command chain the plans have been initiated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What <i>is</i> clear is that the attacks were
not the project of a disciplined modern army.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The delivery systems were extremely crude improvised munitions (IRAMs),
rocket-assisted gas canisters, quite dangerous to the perpetrators.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No modern army would use such weapons.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">In terms of lives lost, air
attacks on hospitals, residential areas and breadlines were the worst.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The breadlines, crucial to Syrians, were hit
with double-tap attacks, where a second munition was dropped once rescuers
showed up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here again, most of the
attacks were nothing like the work of a modern army.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They involved barrel bombs, improvised
munitions not much above the level of a pipe bomb, un-aimable and typically
dropped from helicopters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once more, the
atrocities have the earmarks of disjointed, loosely directed, unsophisticated
military forces.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">For the purposes of justice,
what matters here is that responsibility spreads throughout the Assadist forces
to an unusual extent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The issue is not
whether Assad himself is responsible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If
he had only %1 responsibility in all the slaughter and torture, it would more
than enough to merit the most severe punishments justice could impose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the ragged, diffuse nature of the
atrocities means that, again to an unusual extent, a heavy burden of
responsibility is diffused throughout the hundreds of thousands that formed the
military resources of the Syrian régime.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Could Assadist outrages ever
meet with just retribution?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The verdicts
of the Nuremberg trials, followed by decades of lesser prosecutions, imposed
penalties on only a fraction of those responsible for Nazi war crimes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But compared to what international tribunals
can deliver to Assadist criminals, the Nazi war crimes prosecutions would count
as a stunning success.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
decentralized, anarchic, undisciplined bunch - one could say, a <i>population</i>
of war criminals in Syria - will never show up before tribunals hundreds or
thousands of miles away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They will all
get away with it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only a prolonged and
very determined military occupation would change that, and the prospect of such
an occupation simply doesn’t exist today.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">In short, criminal
investigation and prosecution will do absolutely nothing to restore the rights
of the Syrian people - much less offer protection from brutal murder.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The prosecutions of Assadist criminals will
reach a vanishingly small proportion of the culprits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that means a level of justice approaching
zero.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Though much is made of 'holding
Assad accountable', or anyone else accountable, this is an equivocation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It only means <i>identifying</i> a very, very
few of the culprits, who will go on to lead untroubled lives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It does not mean imposing appropriate
punishment on them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Talk of
accountability offers only the most fragile illusion of justice, not the
reality.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">The whole enterprise of
research, documentation, investigation, analysis and prosecution of Assadist
crimes will, in short, do nothing at all for the Syrian people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It will not do anything to restore their
rights.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It will not deter future
atrocities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It will not even bring some
vastly inadequate consolation to the tiny proportion of families who see their
persecutors condemned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But will anything
else help those suffering under the régime?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What about sanctions?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What about
normalisation?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Sanctions<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">The appeal to sanctions must
be that, somehow, they will make things better for Syrians: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>sure, there will be some negative
consequences, but overall, the régime will bend, and comply with something
resembling minimal standards of decency.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Anyone believing this could hardly venture further into the depths of
denial.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Assad won his war under
sanctions, and Syria has been under sanctions since 1979.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some </span><a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20230220-syrias-long-history-of-sanctions-hurts-the-people-much-more-than-the-regime/"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">argue</span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"> that sanctioning
Syria “hurts the people much more than the regime.”</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">It's hard to see how this
could be false, but suppose it is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even
so, sanctions have failed to bring any substantial change anywhere, it
seems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No doubt the régime is hurt in
the sense that it doesn't get the latest and greatest technology, and its
backers have trouble getting desirable consumer goods, or doing business.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the régime doesn't need any of this to
continue its oppression or cement its rule.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>No doubt sanctions give the régime less power to resist Western military
action, but it's precisely this action which Western nations are steadfastly
resolved to avoid.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">This has been the net
result of sanctions everywhere. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here is
a specialist </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/15/business/economy/russia-airlines-sanctions-ukraine.html"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">commenting</span></a><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"> on
the evasion of current sanctions against Russia.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt 36pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">“I don’t think there’s any secret what’s going
on,” said Gary Stanley, a trade compliance expert who advises businesses in
aerospace and other industries. “How long have we had Cuban sanctions? How long
have we had North Korean sanctions? How long have we had Iranian sanctions? It
never seems to put these folks out of business.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">It seems that demand for
sanctions, and the sanctions themselves, are best understood as an expression
of outrage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Promoting sanctions seems
unrelated to any expectations about making anything better for Syrians, or
indeed to any concern about making things worse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It complements the futile reliance on
internationally imposed justice.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Normalisation<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Maybe the idea about
sanctions is not so much that they work, but that lifting them would be a sign
that we weren't outraged any more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Much
the same might hold with other aspects of normalisation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Many reports have
focused, not on Westerners' outrage, but on the pain which many Syrians
experience to see Assad rehabilitated in the region.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This focus gets us nowhere, because nothing
can be done to alleviate their pain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed
much of the commentary from anti-Assad sources stresses the callousness of, for
example, the Gulf State rulers, who obviously care nothing for the suffering of
the Syrian people.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">This isn’t news.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No one, in the entire course of the Syrian
revolution, has ever suggested that those who came to promote normalisation
were anything but callous in the face of Syrians' agony.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Where Syrian rights and Syrian well-being are
concerned, nothing has changed.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">The only other question
has to do with the effects of normalisation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>One </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/may/18/assads-regime-took-my-father-normalising-relations-feels-like-an-attempt-to-rewrite-history"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">aggrieved
party</span></a><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"> says that "This weekend’s Arab League summit
will embolden the regime to continue its crimes, including the forced
disappearances of hundreds of thousands of innocent Syrians." </span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">The sentiments behind the claim deserve respect, but
the claim itself isn't plausible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">The Syrian régime has never,
at any point in seven decades, showed any hesitation to engage in its atrocious
practices.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It has never shown the
slightest sensitivity to international indignation, or any response to stigmatization.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It has at most offered some paper-thin
imitation of human decency when playing on the international stage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nothing suggests even a remote chance that
external pressure would bring change for the better.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nothing suggests that normalisation will make
things worse, because the régime in its isolation already allowed itself the
full measure of horror.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Normalisation may bring some
changes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps it will expand imports
of Western consumer products.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It might
boost the economy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It might mean that
some humanitarian aid gets though - to the Syrian government, which will know
how to turn that aid to its own advantage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Syria might be stronger; this might help the Syrian people, or it might
make things even worse for those exposed to Assad's vengeance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most likely, it is as with sanctions: on
balance lifting them will do no good, and <i>not</i> lifting them will do no
good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Normalisation won't help, and
withholding it won't help either.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><b><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Hopeless, but for whom?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">In summary, for those who demand
nothing less than justice, there is no hope at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this would mean there is no hope at all
for the Syrian people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They will continue
to suffer at Assad’s good pleasure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
could go on for years, even decades.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">When the lives of so many
Syrians are under such atrocious and open-ended attack, it seems natural,
reasonable to suppose that what matters most are Syrian lives: saving them,
perhaps improving them, should count most in decisions affecting them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But for many Westerners, and some Westernized
Syrians, saving Syrian lives is by no means what matters most.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What matters most is to make choices that
affirm various high principles, and reject choices that don’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is the mentality of someone who sees an
apartment block set ablaze by arsonists, hears the screams of the occupants,
but won’t call in the police and fire, because they’re dyed-in-the-wool Trump
supporters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus even the most vocal
refugee advocates didn’t offer so much as a murmur in support of Erdogan, whose
continued rule shields the lives of many Syrians outside Assad’s grasp.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">This perverse fastidiousness
is most apparent in decisions about Syria itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If the terrible state of Syrians represents
the problem, no one now can suppose that prosecutions or sanctions constitute
the solution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A solution, then, would
have to involve a full-scale, long-term military intervention, one that ends
the régime once and for all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But then
the problem becomes:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>who’s going to
intervene?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here is where every public analysis
of Syria’s agony simply freezes up, and has done so ever since it became
apparent that the pro-democracy, Westernized Syrian factions were not going to
enter Damascus in triumph.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Yet the prospects for
military intervention, were Western countries to support it, have got better,
not worse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Russia will certainly emerge
weaker from the Ukraine conflict, not stronger.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Just two years ago, the prospect of serious confrontation with Russia
made military action in Syria a non-starter, because it posed a tiny but still
unacceptable prospect of all-out world war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Today, that prospect is tinier still, and seems acceptable to many
political actors - as the Ukraine conflict, again, has shown.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">The trouble is that Western
reluctance to intervene in Syria has increased at a rate that far outpaces the
increasing ease of intervention. There are several reasons for this. The West’s
humiliation in Afghanistan makes another <i>mission</i> supremely unattractive
to Western publics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The discovery of
vast natural gas deposits in the Mediterranean makes Syria irrelevant to
Western concerns about energy supplies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And the need to replenish Western armaments sent to Ukraine, combined
with concerns about China, make Western militaries ever more reluctant to take
on another large-scale burden.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">But this does not mean that there
can be no hope for Syrians.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It only
means that hope cannot rest on Western military intervention. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It does raise the possibility that the West
would finally back a regional power, Turkey, in such a venture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This would mean military assistance to
Turkey, in quantity and quality, orders of magnitude greater than today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So armed, Turkey would be in a position to
end Assad's rule.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be clear, this
would require cooperation with some sector of the Syrian revolt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That means Syrian Islamists because, in the
words of one </span><a href="https://www.juancole.com/2022/06/bogged-ukraine-reignite.html"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">specialist</span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt 36pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">As it stands, the most capable and powerful factions
which are able to launch an offensive against the Assad regime are the Islamist
rebel groups in north-western Syria. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">For the West, backing Turkey
to the hilt is far, far cheaper than any of America’s recent wars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Turkey already has a large and capable
army.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would be happy to get the F-35s
it was promised, and could therefore achieve air superiority: the sticking
point was supposed to be its S-400 anti-aircraft system, yet there was </span><a href="https://theaviationgeekclub.com/turkey-kicked-out-of-f-35-program-because-its-purchasing-s-400-but-greece-and-other-nato-countries-already-have-russian-surface-to-air-missile-systems-that-are-part-of-alliances-shared-mis/"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">no fuss</span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"> about
Greece’s S-300.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Strengthening Turkey,
which controls all access from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, would also
strengthen an important counterweight to Russia in the region.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Even better, Turkish
intervention would allow the US to withdraw from Syria altogether.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This might be a good idea, especially for
those appalled by Assad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the
Northeast, the US backs the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Democratic_Forces"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">SDF</span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">, a </span><a href="https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/the-ypg-pkk-connection/"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">front</span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"> for
the PKK.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The PKK is designated as a
terrorist organization by both the US and the EU.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Much more important, the PKK/SDF and its
political counterpart the YPG are intermittent, discreet and fractious but
crucial allies of Assad:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They have
played an </span><a href="https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/kurdish-forces-bolster-assad-in-aleppo"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">important</span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"> </span><a href="https://kyleorton.co.uk/2016/11/30/the-syrian-kurds-helped-assad-take-aleppo-city/"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">role</span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"> in his
victories ever since 2012.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are also
</span><a href="https://www.newarab.com/news/syria-kurds-seek-talks-assad-amid-arab-normalisation"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">proponents</span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"> of the
normalisation so deplored when Arabs propose it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is strong pro-Kurdish sentiment in
Europe, but there are other ways of satisfying it, for example by backing the
PKK rival, the KDP.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet Western nations
affect bemusement when Turkey seems to object to NATO powers sheltering a
PKK-dominated force in northwest Syria, a branch of an organisation conducting
military operations within Turkey.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">At the moment, this
possibility is not a live option.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Perhaps it will never be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
main obstacle is that no one so much as suggests it. The reason is unclear.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">What’s clear is that, in
Western eyes, Turkey, in the person of Erdogan, represents a kind of regional
Donald Trump.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is a ‘conservative’
Muslim, anything but LGBTQ-friendly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even
after winning a “<a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/05/11/turkey-election-erdogan-vote-rigging-civil-society-monitor/">highly
competitive and consequential</a>” election, he is a dictator.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He consorts with Islamists, who fulfil the
role of something like the Proud Boys in the US. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is considered financially reckless and given
to grandiose projects. His wife is veiled, perhaps submissive? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In short, his brand is terrible. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">In contrast, his enemy the
PKK has a wonderful brand: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the PKK is
secular, a brave underdog, and features strong, attractive female leaders and
fighters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is not sarcasm: branding
really seems to be at the root of many commentators’ political choices, who
after all have no skin in the game.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
why the partisanship?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No social or
sexual minorities will be better off because Western decision-makers dislike Erdogan
and Turkey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While deploring Trump might
have some effect on what actually happens in the US and even Europe, deploring
Erdogan will change nothing for Turkey’s minorities. Its only effect is to make
the most plausible route to helping Syrians unthinkable. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is as if the value-based decisions
affecting Syria are divorced from any consideration of cause and effect.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">For there to be hope for
Syrians, there must at least be people whose desire to end Assad’s atrocities outweighs
their branding preferences and their pet causes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They would recognize that if there are <i>no
good options</i>, that’s not a cue to shake one’s head and walk out on Syrians’
agony.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This shouldn’t even look like a hard
choice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Leaving the Syrians to their
awful fate is not going to produce some democratic, LGBTQ-friendly, feminist,
journalist-respecting state in either Turkey or Syria.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed it is hard to understand how hatred of
Erdogan and the Islamists must somehow transmute into useless indignation that might
as well be cruel indifference.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">It would be disingenuous to
pretend that Turkish-Islamist intervention has no real drawbacks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It certainly would not satisfy all legitimate
Kurdish demands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are impressive
analysts and commentators who would agree with my pessimistic arguments but
just shake their heads at the very idea of supporting an Erdogan initiative
linked to his most likely potential ally, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the
increasingly powerful Islamist leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But what could these knowledgeable writers
suggest?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">They could not, with a
straight face, pretend to expect Western powers to </span><a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/iran-and-russia-won-syrias-civil-war-the-us-lost-it"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">intervene,</span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"> after
all this time and in this very tense world situation. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They would have to weigh misery under Assad
against the possibility of something better under a Turkish-Islamist
administration.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jolani and Erdogan have
both taken pains to give the impression of moderation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Are they </span><a href="https://www.mei.edu/blog/pragmatic-jihadist-or-opportunistic-warlord-htss-jolani-expands-his-rule-northern-syria"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">sincere</span></a><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even if they are, could they keep the
situation in hand?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Would the Western or
regional powers cooperate in their efforts?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Could some solution placate the Russians and Iran?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The answers are simple: we can’t possibly
know.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The choice is between the absolute
certainty of unending disaster, for millions, and the distinct but lesser
possibility of some other type of disaster.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It would be irrational to prefer the former.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Michael Neumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01558892758943318577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273076348938263308.post-90026954136179066882021-09-01T10:08:00.005-07:002021-09-12T04:56:02.960-07:00 Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan<p>These were all American defeats, but all different. And the defeat in Afghanistan is much more than an American defeat.</p><p>In Vietnam, America and its Western friends were not alone, and they did not dominate technologically.</p><p>They did not have air superiority over the North, a crucial rear area for the Vietnamese. The North had formidable missile defenses and useful fighter assets. In the South, US air superiority was not complemented by technological superiority. The Vietnamese had good, modern assault rifles, artillery, and other assets. On the other hand, the US was not fighting alone. There was something resembling a civil war, with the communists opposed by deeply entrenched and largely united governing classes. That was why the South Vietnamese army was a real army with real desire and capacity to fight. The defeat of the US was very important, even catastrophic for American morale and self-confidence. American losses were considerable. But that defeat was against an opponent with roughly comparable strength given almost unlimited Soviet backing. This was the first war America lost that it really wanted to win, and it gave everything it had to defeat its enemy. But it was nothing like the defeats to come.</p><p>In Iraq, the US was fighting an opponent which, despite its pretensions, was aggressively secular and just plain aggressive. It had made mortal enemies of most of its neighbours and all of its substantial ethnic groups, including a majority Shia population. In the first Gulf war the US had therefore been able to assemble a genuinely international coalition. Though the Iraqi forces were strong, they were overwhelmed. In the second Gulf war, the Iraqi state was so weakened that it could not seriously resist.</p><p>The US was, nevertheless, defeated. It never established control of the country. It struggled to suppress the secular Sunni resistance. When that threat was greatly diminished, Sunni resistance morphed into ISIS. Here American air superiority enabled the US and its clients to retake all of ISIS territory, but - crucially - not without the active military support of Iran and its proxy militias, and not by eliminating ISIS itself. The US decided it could not, at reasonable cost, maintain control of the country. Therefore it turned the country over to Iran, which has dominated Iraq ever since. The occasional application of US air power hasn't the slightest prospect of changing this political reality. No, this is no one's official story, but it does represent the facts. Here too the US lost the war, because the US failed to achieve its objectives and Iran - an enemy the US acquired before the defeat of Saddam Hussein - did.</p><p>These defeats both mattered enormously. Vietnam did permanent damage to the American spirit, and emboldened its enemies - but comparable enemies, with comparable support, haven't materialized. (9-11 made its own generous contribution to the American malaise.) The defeat in Iraq had only modest geopolitical consequences, but further indicated American weakness, in this case versus a third-tier military power, bolstered with extensive, popularly supported local forces.</p><p>Yet the defeat in Afghanistan was of a different order, probably a great catastrophe for the entire 'Western' world, with 'Western' denoting the US and the nations under its nuclear wing. In Afghanistan, unlike Vietnam, the US had absolute air superiority, as it did in Iraq. But in Vietnam and Iraq, the US eventually ceded the field to forces which, though inferior, had considerable military and technological strength.</p><p>Afghanistan was different. Unlike Vietnam but like Iraq, the US had absolute air superiority, and the enemy had no vast jungles for concealment. Unlike both Iraq (in the later Iran-sponsored militia phase) and Vietnam, the the US faced an enemy who had no secure sanctuary or extensive source of relatively advanced military material. The US had allies from most of the Western world - why not? with air superiority, the involvement was cheap and great for sucking up to the Americans. The enemy had no militarily significant allies, much less a border with any of them. Pakistan, while offering the Taliban very modest backing, committed almost nothing to the fight while providing resupply routes for the Americans. Indeed the Taliban did not even have friends throughout the territory. The struggle was about as uneven as, even in theory, it would be possible to construct. Yet the enemy's victory surpassed all the victories of all the better-positioned US opponents.</p><p>Never before have the US and its Western allies been so thoroughly expelled, so quickly. And never before have Western efforts to rely on proxies been so thoroughly held up to ridicule: it does not matter whose fault that was; it matters that, despite gargantuan efforts, it failed decisively. With almost nothing, the enemy reduced its Western opponents to almost nothing. And the key to its victory is no mystery: the enemy was willing to fight forever, at any cost the West was willing to impose. The West was unwilling to fight, except at arm's length, and that wasn't even close to enough.</p><p>So events have established the following. The US does not command 'unparalleled' military might, period. The US can and often does establish air superiority, but not military superiority, in this case meaning the attainment of set objectives through military force. Military superiority doesn't mean how much stuff or how many special forces sit on some list or on some bases. If, for whatever reason, you're unwilling to use those resources, military superiority is a fantasy. And the Afghanistan débacle has shown, conclusively, that the West is too averse to risk and suffering to use them. What's more, that aversion has steadily increased since the Vietnam era. It follows that in any conflict with a determined, intelligent enemy, whenever the country and population are large enough, the West is very likely to prove, in the old phrase, a paper tiger.</p><p>It's hard to say whether this has penetrated Western consciousness. Certainly the embarrassing posturing about sanctions, conditions, Taliban technical deficiencies, and disaster in the wake of Western withdrawal all suggest a lust for distraction from the nasty, blatantly humiliating truth about Western weakness. But the West's defeat should be frightening even for those who enjoy Western humiliation.</p><p>When so many forces in so many places can overcome Western military power, itself emasculated by societies' incurable distaste for bloody, open-ended engagement, what's going to happen? Will future victories over the West usher in onlyTaliban-style Islamists, or a regionally dominant Pol Pot, or some even more vicious Pinochet? Will the West, ever incapable of providing a serious military response to any serious problem, stave off ever-increasing, ever more extensive political, social and environmental disasters? One may well ask.</p>Michael Neumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01558892758943318577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273076348938263308.post-22276221143994555762020-02-24T07:39:00.000-08:002020-02-24T07:39:05.477-08:00False Autopsies in Syria<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Liberal Syrians and others increasingly favour a certain analysis of
why the Syrian revolution failed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
analysis masks the mistakes that really did contribute to that failure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This invites future disasters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I apologize for bringing this up; it is not
my place to do so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But trying to prevent
the next failure seems reason to speak out of turn.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The 'official' liberal version, palatable to Western commentators, runs
like this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Syrian people came out
demonstrating for freedom and democracy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Their authentic revolution was hijacked by Islamists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These Islamists, along with Assad, ISIS, and,
often, Erdogan, destroyed Syria's dream.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The extent to which this analysis departs from reality is immediately
apparent in its haste to put the Islamists (never mind Erdogan) in the same
category as Assad, referring to " stupid Assadists, Islamists,
Erdoganists".<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This stoops low
indeed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Assad killed at least 200,000
civilians.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even ISIS, which never
claimed nor was considered part of the revolution, killed about 2% of
that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the tally offered<a href="http://whoiskillingciviliansinsyria.org/"> here</a>, "the
rebels", i.e. the nice ones who aren't too Islamist, killed a bit over
4000.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Bad Islamists, represented by
Jabat al Nusra, later HTS, killed 452.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>"The Coalition", incidentally, killed around 3,000.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That "the Islamists" are lumped
together with the likes of ISIS and, incredibly, Assad, is good reason to
question the whole liberal Syrian narrative.<o:p></o:p></div>
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That narrative is mendacious from beginning to end.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No one really knows exactly why "the
Syrian people" revolted - that is to say, what proportion of those out in
the streets were there for which reasons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The horror of Assad's response left no room for thorough surveys.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But most accounts allow that, at the start,
people massed around the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2012/03/16/148719850/revisiting-the-spark-that-kindled-the-syrian-uprising">slogan</a>
"The people want the fall of the regime."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That certainly doesn't imply democracy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It doesn't imply freedom in the democratic
liberal sense - only freedom from spectacularly monstrous repression.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it must be said that 'the Syrian people'
included and still includes some substantial proportion of régime supporters.
They obviously didn't want anything remotely liberal, unless by that is meant a
triumphantly secular lifestyle that aspired to Western cultural norms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Syrian liberals are well aware of all
this.<o:p></o:p></div>
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What we do know is that resistance to the Assads, in the decades
preceding the revolution, was spearheaded by Islamists - the Muslim
Brotherhood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This did not stop Syrian
liberal eminences like Hassan Hassan from telling us, in Western media, that
the Muslim Brotherhood had '<a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/03/13/how-the-muslim-brotherhood-hijacked-syrias-revolution/">hijacked</a>'
the revolution as early as 2013.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His
evidence?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That the Brotherhood has
aspired to dominate various revolutionary committees like the Syrian National
Coalition at various meetings in various hotels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Apparently these almost forgotten
administrative constructs are supposed to be a valid stand-in for 'the Syrian
people' who, it seems, made the revolution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>How quickly 'the people' cede the stage, in liberal eyes, to the notable
individuals who purport to represent them.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The portrayal of Islamists as hijackers or even as enemies of the
Syrian revolution mirrors what has undermined resistance to Assad almost all
along.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is not that secular or
non-Islamist fighting groups refused to join with Islamists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is that the secular, bourgeois
commentariat constantly incited secularists to do just that. They cheered every
attempt - for example in Kafranbel and Maraat al Numan - to resist and
undermine Islamist movements.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's as if
the necessity of unity in the face of a formidable enemy never crossed their
minds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Either that, or they thought
their anti-Islamist takes would win them enough favour with the Americans to
become dominant in the Syrian revolution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This was a pipe dream.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Syrian
revolution was never going to be utterly sanitized to American standards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was always going to have enough
association with Islamists (if only in the past) that the US was <a href="https://insufficientrespect.blogspot.com/2013/06/when-america-deserts-syria.html">never</a>
going to trust even non-Islamist Syrians with serious military resources.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We'll never know how much difference, if any, that made.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But what seems clear is that the
anti-Islamist commentary is the tip of a strategic iceberg that bedeviled the
revolutions in both Egypt and Syria.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
is the reluctance to make hard choices, or even to acknowledge that there were
hard choices to be made.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Secularist and liberal Muslim opposition to Islamists is only to be
expected.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Syria there were and are
Islamist groups far more radical than, say, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The radical Islamist opposition in Syria - I
don't mean the crazy Islamists, like ISIS - certainly ventured into policies
the secularists found abhorrent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Radical
Islamist punishments for smoking, going about unveiled, just being homosexual,
were harsh, sometimes appalling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Radical
Islamist governance often involved active suppression of free speech and local
democratic institutions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This governance
included educational projects that were in some cases obscurantist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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Furthermore, given the understated prominence of Islamists in the
Syrian revolution, there was reason to believe that Syria, after Assad, might
come under Islamist rule.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This could
happen democratically, or undemocratically.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And given such rule, there was reason to believe that, quite possibly,
religious minorities would be persecuted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There might even be massacres, especially of Christians perceived as
Assad loyalists.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Given all this, did the secular and liberal Muslim opposition really
even have a hard choice?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would be polite
to say this, but untrue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was no
choice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To avoid unending mass torture
and slaughter, the liberals would have to accept Islamists as allies, perhaps
as leaders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Given the absolute necessity
of stopping Assad, no other course of action was even worth considering.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In the first place, Assad's determination and brutality, unprecedented
in a region which has seen much brutality, was underwritten by a sizable
professional army, an air force against which the rebels had no defence, and
virtually unlimited supplies of manpower from Iran's proxies, as well as
virtually unlimited resupply of equipment from Russia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The very thought that the rebels could
overcome this without full cooperation with Islamists, was absurd.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And a failed revolt meant more than defeat;
it meant unlimited and unending slaughter, for decades.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So even if it meant submission to Islamists,
there was no viable alternative.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In the second place, the anti-Islamists mislead when they put radical
Islamists in the same category as extremists like ISIS, much less extreme
monsters like Assad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many Islamists
might be called extreme in their social or cultural doctrines, but that doesn't
translate into extreme savagery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While
Islamists factions certainly have committed atrocities in the civil war, so
have all the other participants, including 'The Coalition'.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's the scale that counts, and by that
criterion even the most 'extreme' Islamists are very moderate, despite what
some consider their immoderate domestic agenda.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In the third place, the mere possibility of future atrocities carries
no weight against the ongoing absolute certainty of present atrocities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What the Islamists might do in power, what
might be done to prevent atrocities, and by whom, are all purely
speculative.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Taking the dangers
seriously doesn't justify preferring possibility to reality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was no stopping the deaths of hundreds
of thousands without full-fledged support for the Islamists - though even that
might not have been enough.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This might be considered crying over spilt milk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But what of the future?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Non-Islamists cling to fantasies about
'their' revolution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It wasn't hijacked
by Islamists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There will never be a
successful revolution in the Middle East without Islamists, because the
oppressors are overwhelmingly anti-Islamist and because the small minority of
nice anti-Islamists cannot muster enough strength to overcome cruel,
well-equipped militaries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In short,
until nice people abandon their dreams and accept an Islamist future, there is
no hope.</div>
Michael Neumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01558892758943318577noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273076348938263308.post-22672664713005892822018-12-21T04:06:00.002-08:002018-12-21T05:19:03.548-08:00Nonsense about the US withdrawal from Syria<br />
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This attempts to counter some of the foolish comments made
about Trump's withdrawal from Syria.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The least foolish of these is that the battle against ISIS
is not won.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No it isn't, and Trump's
claim that it is, is plainly false.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
to harp on this is absurd.<o:p></o:p></div>
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For one thing, there isn't the slightest possibility that
keeping US troops in Syria would win the battle, or prevent an ISIS
resurgence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>ISIS' ultimate strength
lies, not in its Syrian or Iraqi enclaves, but in what the West and Arab
authoritarian governments have done to the peoples of the region, and in the
conditions in Muslim countries worldwide.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>These conditions guarantee a literally unending stream of militants
seeking justice and revenge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The notion
that 2000 US troops would affect this dynamic is ludicrous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Equally foolish are the tiresome
recommendations that the underlying conditions be addressed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The sage pundits who say these things know
perfectly well that the West will never, ever address these conditions:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>it can't, because they occur in sovereign
states.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would take a Western
occupation of those states, involving hundreds of thousands of troops for
decades, to cure the injustices of the region, and even then it's not clear
that the economic basis for healthy societies exists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In other words, whatever the West is going to
do, whatever leadership it has, ISIS won't be defeated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What then is the point of warning us that Trump's withdrawal will not defeat ISIS?<o:p></o:p></div>
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For another, forget the mantra about how effective the
Kurds have been against ISIS.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their
victories are almost entirely the result of overwhelming US air and artillery
support.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their actual capabilities are
better assessed by looking at how even a much-weakened ISIS can rout Kurdish
forces with attacks during storms and under other conditions inimical to air
operations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Syrian rebels, not to
mention the Turkish army, would be at least as effective as the Kurds in
combating ISIS, and they wouldn't need a US ground presence to do it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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There is more foolishness.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It is said that withdrawal shows the US to be an unreliable
ally, and that this is a dire mistake.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In the first place, nothing says you're unreliable like
supporting, with weapons, troops and air power, the armed, active enemy of your
ally.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That's what the US did when it
backed the Syrian arm of the Kurdish PKK against its NATO ally, Turkey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So Trump's withdrawal of this support could
well be seen as a return to reliability, not the abandonment of it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Second, it's unclear that appearing unreliable in this
instance would make much difference to the US position in the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nations are allied to the US, not because
they have touching faith in America, but because they have little choice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They don't want to fall under Russian or
Chinese domination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The idea that
alliances are made and preserved on trust runs contrary to all historical
precedent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's childish.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It is said that US withdrawal is a gift to Putin.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This carries absurdity into insanity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The unspoken truth about the US' Kurdish
'allies' is that they are also <a href="https://kyleorton1991.wordpress.com/2017/12/10/americas-kurdish-allies-in-syria-drift-toward-the-regime-russia-and-iran/">allies
of Russia and Assad</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the 2015
campaigns against rebel Aleppo, Russia and Assad even provided air support to
the Kurds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Later, Assad secured for the
Kurds a road whereby they could move between their Northeastern and Northwestern
territories.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He also pays for much of
the infrastructure in the Northeastern provinces.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This means that, in allying with the PKK/YPG,
the US is allied to Assad, Russia...<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and
Iran.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's true that Putin probably
enjoys seeing the US leave; he doesn't want a US presence in Syria.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it's also true that Obama, and until now
Trump, have been fighting on Putin's side.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He now faces an expanded Turkish presence in Northern Syria, which
threatens and complicates his relations with Assad and Iran.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because Turkey backs the rebels, it even
threatens the security of Russian bases in Latakia and Tartous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Trump's withdrawal means the US will mend
relations with Turkey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That in turn
means Putin can't expect to pry that country - a real strategic prize that
until recently seemed almost within his grasp - away from its Western alliance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally, the US retains its air bases and
naval presence in the region, so that US withdrawal of 2000 troops from Syria
makes not the slightest difference to the regional balance of power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some gift.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It is said, with feeling, that the Kurds have been betrayed.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Even if there is some truth to this, it is foolish.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For one thing, the Kurds have been supremely
opportunistic in their choice of allies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They feigned neutrality when the rebels were strong, yet with increasing
frankness came out on Assad's side when the rebels faltered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For another, the morality of betrayal depends
on circumstances.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Kurds chose to
ally with a régime so monstrous that adjectives like 'brutal' can't begin to
capture the extent of its atrocities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When the King of Italy abandoned Mussolini in 1943 he betrayed
Hitler.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Was that reprehensible?<o:p></o:p></div>
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The criticism of Trump's withdrawal, though couched in the
language of morality and even honour, is curiously oblivious to the sort of
humanitarian considerations that you'd think would belong to those values.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The most likely consequence of US withdrawal
- should it really occur - is that Northern Syria will become a refuge for
perhaps millions of Syrians, under Turkish protection.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Meanwhile in the rest of Syria, as widely
predicted, Syrians in formerly rebel areas are subjected to arbitrary
imprisonment, torture, and murder.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
sure, pontificate some more about the US withdrawal.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Michael Neumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01558892758943318577noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273076348938263308.post-27649386986784057742018-07-25T06:11:00.000-07:002018-08-02T22:55:40.071-07:00The Syrian failure: aftermath and legacyThe reaction to Syria's horrors did nothing to mitigate them. They will continue for decades. It may be useful to review just how throughly and deeply irredeemable is the failure.<br />
<br />
To say that there were war crimes and human rights violations is like saying Charles Manson misbehaved. Assad's crimes have been documented in heart-stopping detail, not least by the 'Caesar', who smuggled out prison files and fifty thousand photographs, at great risk of a fate worse than death. His efforts, plus the meticulous work of the individuals and groups who proved that the régime was the culprit in chemical weapons attacks... these efforts too are now, beyond any doubt or hope, in vain.<br />
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To say that Assad and company should be brought before an international tribunal is self-deluding sound and fury, signifying nothing. Let's be clear. Assad and company will never be brought to justice. Tribunal verdicts will have no effect at all. All the evidence painstakingly assembled, sometimes at the cost of brave lives, counts for nothing. There will be no reconciliation, and there is no truth to come out, because more than enough is known already. There is no point in making more people aware of that truth, because it's too late. That won't even produce useful sentiments, let along useful non-psychological reactions - sentiments don't stop homicidal rulers. If someone declares, somewhere, that the Syrian repression was a genocide, so what - it's not even true. 'The world', the 'international order', some 'community', don't matter. Assad is far too secure. There is absolutely nothing to be done that any collection of worthy countries or institutions would ever be willing to do, and rightly so, because the only effective response would be a military intervention so massive as to risk, given the Russian presence, nuclear war. It's great to help the refugees, the victims, but that's cleaning up after Assad, not something that could lead to restraining him or his ilk. Indeed most refugees will <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/03/22/turkey-mass-deportations-syrians" target="_blank">stay or end up in Syria</a>, left to his tender mercies. As for reconstruction, that of course will make Assad much stronger. It will focus on his supporters, not those most in need.<br />
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All that's left, all that might conceivably have some positive effect but won't, is to expose the thinking that encouraged the Syrian betrayal. Try comparing the reaction on Syria to reactions to other horrors.<br />
<br />
There are greater and lesser atrocities. Pinochet murdered more than 3000 people, some tortured to death with <a href="http://mneumann.tripod.com/pinochet.html" target="_blank">terrible cruelty</a>. There are people who approve of Pinochet, or brush off his slaughter. They may be condemned, but like Henry Kissinger they continue to be accepted in the mainstream. They shouldn't be, but this indicates that society, the mainstream, is prepared to accept this level of brutality.<br />
<br />
Then there are major atrocities: Cambodia, Rwanda are clear cases. Anyone who brushes off those killings would not be considered normal, but treated as a pariah. No one hears from such people. No one suggested helping Pol Pot with reconstruction and reconciliation. No one said that, well, realistically, we need to consider whether we have any vital interest in Rwanda. Not even <a href="https://books.google.fr/books?id=LQfeXVU_EvgC&pg=PA306&lpg=PA306&dq=henry+kissinger+rwanda&source=bl&ots=z-LKwwqKHt&sig=qUHmesMItE4gaClZNH1AFIs-wEg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwidlbypgLPcAhUPecAKHfMgAMgQ6AEIejAP#v=onepage&q=henry%20kissinger%20rwanda&f=false" target="_blank">Kissinger</a>.<br />
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The atrocities committed by Assad are very clearly in the second category, not the first. Yet people who obliquely place them in the first group are considered not only mainstream-tolerable, but, quite often, intelligent contrarians. One hears from them a lot.<br />
<br />
But that's not the worst of it. Assad apologists fall into three categories. There are Iranians and Russians. Those countries have long-standing alliances with the Assads and might be considered to have some sort of security interest in the régime. Their stance is disgusting but hardly worth highlighting, since no one will do anything about it. Then there are members of Syrian minorities whom Assad has implicated in his crimes. And then there are leftists, stuck in the 70s or so, who don't matter. Obsessing about Assad apologists does no one any good.<br />
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Those who do matter aren't the obvious offenders, but respected observers whose attempts or pretense at objectivity or decency betrayed the Syrian people. They obscure Assad's place in the second category, among the very worst of the monsters. These people may condemn the régime in ringing terms, they may say 'doing something' about Assad's atrocities is 'urgent'. But they nonetheless demote the urgency of the matter, because for them, everything is 'urgent'. It is 'urgent' that an imprisoned journalist be released, that a child is reunited with its parents, that minority rights are respected, that 'genders' get the toilets they need, and so on. And perhaps these things are all indeed urgent, but they do not compare in urgency with stopping a man who has murdered and tortured hundreds of thousands.<br />
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Human rights organizations are prominent in this morally and politically witless denial of priorities. So are any number of analysts and commentators. They talked about Assad as they would not talk about Rwanda or Pol Pot. They would not, in those cases, have spoken of 'difficult choices', as they did about Assad and the Kurds and 'the jihadis'. They would regard any accommodation with Assad as no more to be contemplated than with the fanatic responsible for so many dead, tortured Cambodians. They would not have insisted the world weigh heavily that some rebels didn't believe in democracy and espoused a repressively conservative social agenda. They would not have relentlessly conflated this social conservatism with, incredibly, some sort of <a href="https://insufficientrespect.blogspot.com/2016/05/charles-listers-jihad-against-jabhat-al.html" target="_blank">terrorist threat</a>.<br />
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These analysts should be treated as moral lepers if their warnings played a role in the West's betrayal of the Syrian revolution. No one warned the world about Vietnam's rescue of the Cambodian people on the grounds that the Vietnamese were naughty communists. No one thought it was a tough choice whether to back the murderers of Rwanda or their victims. No one reduced the description of these régimes to "brutal dictatorship".<br />
<br />
It is far too late for this to make any difference to Syrians. Assad has won and he will endure. He will be condemned as a reprehensible leader, but a leader nonetheless. He is protected by powerful allies, UN vetoes, and discreet commitments from 'indignant' Western powers not to challenge his rule. But perhaps it is not too late to prevent this sort of kindler, gentler, 'hard choices' whitewash from recurring. Those who preached caution, scepticism and realpolitik about the Syrian rebels made choices that should never be forgotten or forgiven. It doesn't matter what nice things they now say about refugees. It doesn't matter what righteous outrage they express about Assad. When it counted, they didn't even begin to impart to the situation the moral urgency, even the panic, that it deserved. They were not willing to accept that their worries about extremist and terrorist rebels were as nothing compared to the importance of stopping a monster. That is a poisonous legacy.<br />
<br />
Let no one reply that these analysts were realistic. At its limits, morality and even Realpolitik converge. All nations have an interest in keeping barbarism within practical limits. Slaughter and mistreatment may sometimes be genuinely advantageous, but for that very reason it's a good idea to act when slaughter and mistreatment become an open-ended, sadistic orgy, engulfing tens of thousands and exceeding anything plausibly endorsed by rational self-interest. Mad tyrants, as we see, create floods of fugitives, and potentially destabilising wars. They also create militants out to punish the comfortable nations who betrayed the victims. Auden was right:<br />
<br />
I and the public know,<br />
What all schoolchildren learn,<br />
Those to whom evil is done<br />
Do evil in return.<br />
<br />
This is likely the last post I will write on Egypt or Syria. My sole aim has been, however ineffectually and wrong-headedly, to defend their revolutions. Such attempts are pointless now.Michael Neumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01558892758943318577noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273076348938263308.post-53399427814327075172018-07-21T01:40:00.001-07:002018-07-22T12:48:00.124-07:00Betrayers in Egypt, betrayed in Syria: Liberalism’s Arab Winter<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
The sufferings of Egyptians and Syrians
will go on for decades. That will allow
plenty of time for think tanks, graduate students, journalists, op-ed writers,
scholars and security analysts to build or enhance their careers on the
‘lessons’ of these events. This essay
offers the one lesson that none of these efforts will produce. It is that, if the Middle East has a future,
it does not lie with freedom, democracy, ‘empowering’ this or that favored
sector of society, investing in this or that or the other thing, shoring up
anti-something efforts, or ‘standing up’ for something-or-other. It lies, for better or however worse, with
Islam.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">This is not an Islamist claim.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It doesn’t really have a lot to do with the
nature of Islam in any of its forms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
has to do with the role of liberals in the so-called Arab Spring, and with the
role of the political tendencies and institutions they hold dear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The following will argue this from the
conduct and motivations of liberals in Egypt and Syria, and from the record of
secular government in the region.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To
examine this conduct, you need to consider the nature of the events we’re
dealing with.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">Their very name invites distortion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
term 'Arab Spring' reveals the delusions deliberately or, much more often,
unthinkingly promoted by those who sympathise with the now-failed revolts in
Egypt, Syria, and Tunisia (which won't be discussed here).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The spring in the name comes from the 1968
"Prague Spring", well-known as Czechoslovakia's nonviolent striving
towards nice, Western, democratic ideals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The idea was to portray the revolts in the same way:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>nice, non-violent, pro-Western,
pro-democracy, and 'democracy' in the Polly-Annish Western sense of a practice
where only People Like Us get elected.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-CA">None of this
applies to the revolts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-CA">Even in Egypt,
they were not non-violent: indeed this lie is also a grievous insult to the
heroic Egyptians who fought police and snipers like lions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The idea that only non-violent resisters
should be held up for admiration pervades not only Western but middle class
Middle Eastern propaganda.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Apparently,
it is only in the West that fighting tyrants is acceptable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-CA">As for nice
ideals, that held for the leadership and much of the vanguard in the very first
days of the revolts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But this induces a
misunderstanding:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that the vanguard was
the heart and soul of these uprisings.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-CA">They were not. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Had this been true, the 'Arab Spring' would
have been just another of the many pointless middle class cameos in the story
of stagnant or dynamically monstrous Middle Eastern régimes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There would have been some arrests and things
would have got right back to normal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
it was what's annoyingly called the 'Arab Street' that was out to finish what
the middle class liberals started.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
ordinary Egyptians (and Syrians), the ones who didn't make themselves heard on
web sites or social media, were not Prague Spring types.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(When the song <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sout al horreya</i> refers to hunger, it is not singing about the
middle class.) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were religious and had
become increasingly so as the hopes raised by Nasser’s secularist vision faded.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their religion, as it reached out to those
trapped in poverty, inevitably acquired political overtones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It affected their notions of freedom and
democracy: Morsi’s relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, for example, did
not count as some dangerous threat to their version of those ideals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unlike the middle class, they wanted real
social change, better lives, not institutional reform.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some of them wanted power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They felt their time had come, and their
rule would not conform to a liberal, secularist model.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-CA">The recent
history of resistance to the state testifies to this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those who died opposing the military in Egypt
were, overwhelmingly, Muslim Brotherhood, and this after the middle class ushered in a military dictatorship in the name of liberal values.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Syria, when resistance had to arm itself
or perish, it was Islamist militias who increasingly dominated the middle class
movements with their business-suited leaders in Turkey or Europe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These Islamist movements were not the heart
and soul of the demonstrations that are now reviewed with nostalgia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But they were the heart, soul and muscle of
resistance, when the going got really tough and rebel units, in the face of
massacres outside the main urban centers, established themselves in the
countryside & smaller cities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And as
usual, in the countryside, people were more conservative and less liberal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">What the middle class liberals started
gained historic significance because it almost instantaneously drew in hundreds
of thousands who were neither middle class nor liberal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How did the liberals react?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-CA">The liberals’ conduct</span></i><span lang="EN-CA">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">In Egypt, their reaction can be summed up
in few words.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When Egypt’s first free
and fair election brought in Mohamed Morsi, whom they considered an Islamist,
they spun tales of how he was a sinister authoritarian in disguise.<a href="file:///F:/edit/notspring1.docx#_edn1" name="_ednref1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[i]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They poo-pooed the idea that democracy was as
it had been defined for two thousand years, as majority rule, and decided it
had to guarantee that liberal voices and ideologies predominated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More important, they decided that yes, they actually
preferred the murdering, torturing military to Morsi, who they feared was the
thin edge of a Brotherhood wedge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
very idea that they didn’t know what their prominent participation in Morsi’s
overthrow would bring to Egypt is beneath contempt.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">In Syria, it’s more complex.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">The liberals fall into three categories –
ex-officers in the Syrian armed forces, exile politicians, and highly literate
activists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Though middle class, they could
not have behaved more differently from their Egyptian counterparts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the most part they steadfastly refused
to abandon their Islamist allies, despite strong pressure from the US.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">Perhaps the liberals relied on the Islamist
forces to keep Assad at bay.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps,
adequately supported by the US, they would have turned on the ‘extremist’
militias.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the fact is, they never
did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This, however, proved the undoing
of the Syrian revolution.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">Here the fateful decision for the liberals
was not so much with whom to ally domestically, but with whom to ally outside
the country.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They chose, or tried to
choose, the West.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They did not choose
the region's counterpart to Morsi:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Erdogan, incessantly labeled an anti-liberal authoritarian.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To have chosen Erdogan would have meant, were
the revolution to succeed, decisive Turkish involvement and influence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This would mean, in turn, that the liberals
were irreparably subordinated to the Islamist tendencies represented by Erdogan
himself and by the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The liberals, it seems, were not dead set against alliance with such
forces when it was a matter of physical survival.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But to accept Islamist leadership, if not
immediately then in Syria's future, was something the liberals could not
contemplate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So they persisted in their
dream that they were indeed fighting for Freedom and Democracy, and so was
'Syria' itself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">But those where not 'Syria's'
objectives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A large though unknown
proportion of Syria's anti-Assad masses weren’t liberals; they were likely more
conservative than the Muslim Brotherhood itself. (Indeed despite strenuous
efforts to highlight the role of women in the demonstrations, the crowds were
overwhelmingly male, to an extent that defies attempts to present the 2011
uprising as predominantly secularist.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many
others, not Islamist or even conservative, turned to the Islamist militias as
their best counter to Assad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Western
governments knew this and quickly soured on the revolution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Long before the emergence of ISIS and
‘Al-Qaeda affiliated’ group, the West was nervous about the Muslim Brotherhood
component of the Syrian National Council and the Free Syrian Army.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Though it took some time to become apparent,
once this happened, the game was up.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">From the very start of its ‘efforts’, the
US and denied the rebels anti-aircraft weapons they feared might fall into the
hands of the rebels’ Islamist battlefield allies. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Without such weapons, the rebels couldn’t hang
on to their territorial gains and couldn’t protect their civilian populations. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Soon arms deliveries slowed to a trickle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The same fear of Islamist domination prompted
the US to decide it didn’t, after all, want the revolution to succeed, nor even
give it the support it needed to survive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And it did not survive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So the
choice of the West over Erdogan was indeed fateful, and the liberals played a
major role in making it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">By allying, not with Turkey but with 'the
West', i.e. the US and its ever-serviceable partner, Jordan, the liberals had
mired the Syrian uprising in false hopes and, eventually, worse, a partly
successful attempt to convert the desperate revolutionary forces away from
rebellion, to become mere Western proxies in the fight against ISIS.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was also to invite the West to promote
reliably anti-Islamist forces, the Kurdish PKK, in preference to the rebels and
in sneaking, tacit alliance with Assad.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">Turkey held the only promise of deposing
Assad, because it held the only promise of an understanding between the anti-Assad
forces, Russia and Iran.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Turkey couldn’t
care less that Russia annexed the Crimea, nor that Russia wanted an expanded
presence in the Mediterranean.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It didn’t
care about Hezbollah and had important economic ties to Iran.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was, then, a chance that Russia and
Iran could be persuaded to sideline Assad in return for an important regional
ally who would be fine with an expansion of Russian bases in the area.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the other hand, a rebel-US alliance meant
that potential allies, Iran and Russia, had to be enemies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">The liberals’ choice also hobbled Turkey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The West’s bright idea for fixing Syria was to
support the YPG, the Syrian branch of the Kurdish PKK.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were Assad’s allies and Erdogan's
military enemies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On top of this, the
West (and sometimes the liberals) consistently incited secularist rebel units
against hard-line Islamist forces, so that the rebels were weakened still
further.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Erdogan, beset by a pro-Assad
opposition, potential Russian pushback and the US’ protection of the Kurds,
could not provide the military muscle the rebels needed. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So the US betrayal was the end of the
road.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Choosing the West meant,
unwillingly, unknowingly but unavoidably, choosing Assad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was the terrible price for placing faith
in Western democracies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-CA">Why
did the liberals make their choices?</span></i><span lang="EN-CA"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">Though the choices of Syrian and Egyptian
liberals were radically different, their ultimate motivation was the same.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They found the prospect of an Islamist future
intolerable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">It would be hard for those who have never
seen Egypt to fathom the frustration experienced by liberals there, even under
Mubarak’s secularist rule.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A Muslim
librarian, gone to buy a washing machine, is berated by the salesman for not
wearing a veil.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She complains that her
assistants constantly slip religious tracts into her display cases.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Alcohol is bought and consumed
semi-clandestinely, amid disapproval.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A
woman is told that if she smokes on the street, "everyone will think you
are a prostitute."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even modestly
dressed, women are subject to constant harassment - and sometimes they would rather
not be modestly dressed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You leave a
famous antique shop to find the landing entirely occupied by devout employees
at prayer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You can't have bacon and
eggs, or kiss on the street, or sign into a hotel with a male other than your
husband.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To enter into a mixed marriage
requires a high tolerance for outraged opposition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The liberals, by and large wealthy enough to
travel and even live partly abroad, find the country stifling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These lifestyle preoccupations are
pervasive, unceasing, and, the truth is, far, far more important to most
liberals than whether they live under freedom and democracy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were much happier under Nasser's
aggressively secularist dictatorship.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">Maybe better to say this:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the liberals wanted cultural freedom, and,
for some, the freedom to write political commentary linked to their media
careers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But they weren't interested in
political freedom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Though pretending
otherwise, they viewed it with hostility when they saw it in operation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Political freedom meant democracy and democracy
meant the Brotherhood.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">The liberals, bluntly put, view the Muslim
Brotherhood and its followers with deep hatred.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They felt accommodation was impossible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They were prepared to live in the 'pre-Spring' atmosphere, but feared
that, with the Brotherhood in a governing position, life would become genuinely
intolerable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So the emergence of an
Islamist government was seen as an existential threat - not to the existence of
liberals, but to the existence of the lifestyle they worked hard to maintain.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">The Syrian liberals' situation was almost
the mirror-image of the Egyptians'.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Despite sincere hatred of Assad's Syria, liberals could well imagine
that his overthrow would bring something much like what the Egyptian liberal
experienced and very probably what they feared for the future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Though the Assad régime was repugnant, though
the course of events made armed revolution the only possible response, Syrian
liberals were deeply concerned to retain control over the revolution's
course.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This could not exclude alliance
with conservative Islamist forces, but it had to involve some external
constraint on the extent to which Islamists would dominate a post-Assad
future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That constraint could only come
from close, fruitful alliance with the West, and, since the Europeans were far
too timid to act on their own, with the US.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Unlike their Egyptian counterparts, the Syrian liberals never
contemplated the betrayal of the revolution undertaken.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Indeed the entire history of independent
Syria indicated that any attempt by members of a liberal élite to rejoin the
fold would end in torture and death.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But they hoped against hope that US support would enable them to retain
strong leadership of the anti-Assad forces.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">So in Egypt and Syria alike, fear of
Islamists pushed the liberals into decisions disastrous for their revolutions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But did they really have an
alternative?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If they did, was it
anything more than an unappetizing choice of some supposedly lesser evil?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-CA">The
future</span></i><span lang="EN-CA"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">Suppose that the liberals were completely justified
in their attitudes towards political Islam.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Suppose they<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>had a deeply
principled commitment to the values that happened to underwrite their lifestyle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It hardly matters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Political Islam is the only road to change
left in the Middle East.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It might be a
dead end or even a road to hell, but nothing will improve unless that road is
taken.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s the only way to bring the
sort of real change that sidelines the élites - often the 'notable families'
who have run things since Ottoman times - who have so conspicuously failed to
provide good government.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">The reason Islam offers the only realistic
hope for change is simple:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>there are no
plausible alternatives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sure, liberal
democracy or some other secularist tendency might in theory offer some
wonderful solution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But they cannot
offer a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">plausible</i> solution because
their record is so indelibly tainted, especially but not exclusively in the
Middle East.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">A rational observer of history has to
conclude that, believe it or not, Islamism offers the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">safest</i> alternative, because literally every major atrocity in
recent history has been secularist, including the mass slaughters of Cambodia,
Rwanda, and the Congo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>True, history
also offers some good secular régimes, including liberal democracies, but these
failed to ward off the horrors of, for example, Franco Hitler and Stalin, not to
mention two world wars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Someone might
argue that, despite these unusual cases, secularist and in particular liberal
democratic government offers rewards that outweigh the risks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that won’t work if, as a rational Middle
Easterner would do, you focus the secularist record in the Middle East.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">There we have just two régimes that might
possibly be considered liberal democracies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Israel, with its bloodshed and its dedication to racial sovereignty, can
hardly attract emulation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So there
remains Lebanon, which even has a roughly Western-style economy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Lebanon’s civil war cost 175,000 lives,
and no one suggests a repeat is out of the question.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet when we look at other secularist régimes,
the record is even worse.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">The secularist governments of the Middle
East have included some non-disasters, countries where torture and repression
are rife as the society slowly deteriorates – in Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, and
Morocco.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Otherwise, secularism has been
a catastrophe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s Saddam, the
Assads, and the Shah of Iran.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s
Iraq after the American occupation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Gaddafi drifts into insanity after inflicting terrible suffering in Chad
and Libya itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Secularist government
brought Yemen nothing but war and starvation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Algeria’s horrifying struggle with Islamists cost another 175,000 lives.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">But it is not just the terrible record of
secularism that make it an implausible solution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Woven into these disasters is the West’s dogged
resistance to every single secular or moderate ideology that gained some
traction in the Middle East – as opposed to the gallery of dictators that have
benefitted from Western support.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Communism
wouldn't do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Arab nationalism and Arab
socialism weren't good enough either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Their greatest and most successful exponent, Nasser, became a pariah
among Western democracies; he was undone by the Western-sponsored and
secularist state of Israel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moderate
Islam, in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood, has labelled extremist and
ruthlessly suppressed by the entrenched élites it threatened.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The West may not have overthrown Morsi, but
they quickly accepted the coup and have been lavishing military and economic
attention on the Sisi régime ever since. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet if a secularist project wanted to please
the West and dedicated itself to repressing even moderate Islamist groups, it
would have time and energy for nothing else.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">With secularism offering no plausible
promise of change, only Islam remains.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even
if what matters most is the defeat of political Islam, that will never happen
unless Islamists are discredited.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be
discredited, they would have to be given a real, full chance to govern, free
from the sort of deep state sabotage that marked Morsi's so-called reign in Egypt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only then will political Islam prove or
disprove itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If it brings positive
change, great.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If it doesn't, the
secularists will get their new chance, without the encumbrance of a strong
Islamist opposition.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">Given the whole secularist record in the
Middle East, I wouldn't be optimistic how that would turn out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The abiding contemporary liberal stance is
loud espousal of freedom and democracy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But these only have to do with the forms and legal structures of
government, not with policy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They don't
give people jobs or address climate change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There is also, of course, commitment to diversity, which means we will
all acquire full participation in our disastrous societies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the early days of liberalism, liberals at
least offered laissez-faire capitalism, a bad program but a substantive program
nonetheless.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Today they have
nothing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can't see why they would be
more likely than Islamists to find substantive solutions.</span></div>
<div style="mso-element: endnote-list;">
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<br />
<div id="edn1" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="file:///F:/edit/notspring1.docx#_ednref1" name="_edn1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-CA"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[i]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-CA"> For a critical analysis of this claim, see Mohammed Fadel, “What
killed Egyptian democracy?”, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Boston
Review</i>, January 24, 2014, http://bostonreview.net/forum/mohammad-fadel-what-killed-egyptian-democracy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
</div>
<br />Michael Neumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01558892758943318577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273076348938263308.post-48270569755674831202018-07-11T09:30:00.000-07:002018-07-11T09:30:44.323-07:00What broke the Syrian revolution?An <a href="http://www.regthink.org/en/articles/the-breaking-of-syrias-rebellion" target="_blank">investigation</a> by Elizabeth Tsurkov entitled "The Breaking of Syria's Rebellion" has elicited debate over what broke it. Did it break because the rebels were corrupted, authoritarian, feuding, oppressive, or did the rebels get that way because something else broke it - most likely Russian and Iranian intervention. It's not the sort of debate that can be definitively resolved. But there are reasons to think the breaking came first.<br />
<br />
The interviews on which the study is based took place since, it seems, about mid-2016. Supposing by then that the revolution was broken, the findings diminish in significance. Of course if things seeemed hopeless, corruption would set in; discipline would break down; authoritarianism - a given when an area is under severe military threat - would intensify, and the mass of people would resent being exposed, for nothing, to the horrors of war. And of course the most determinedly ideological forces, in this case radical Islamist militants, would be seen as the lone inheritors of the struggle. But when was hope lost?<br />
<br />
In my opinion hope was lost well before a full-fledged Iranian/Russian intervention. It was lost roughly when Obama erased his own red line, about mid-2013. About the time of his reversal, he also made it crystal clear, despite reports to the contrary by Michael Weiss and other supposedly knowlegable journalists, that the US would never seriously supply the rebels with what they needed to counter Assad. (I argued this <a href="https://insufficientrespect.blogspot.com/2013/06/when-america-deserts-syria.html" target="_blank">in some detail</a> in June, 2013.) In particular, that meant the rebels would never have the capacity even to moderate the régime's air attacks. Indeed, the US did not merely refrain from supplying the most minimal anti-aircraft capacity; it forbade other parties from supplying such weapons as well. This inability didn't necessarily mean the rebels would be wiped out, but it did mean they couldn't win. It did mean that civilians were being exposed to the barrel bombs and other attacks for - it was becoming clear - nothing.<br />
<br />
So it was the US betrayal that really marked the turning point. Its effects were delayed for some time because the US took another year or two entirely to abandon the pretense of supporting the rebels against Assad, rather than as a mere proxy force against ISIS. But past that point, if hope did not die instantly, it died slowly. The demoralisation of the rebels and the degradation of their cause - so carefully documented by Tsurkov - was then inevitable.Michael Neumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01558892758943318577noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273076348938263308.post-15722595287859803472018-04-14T05:28:00.001-07:002018-04-14T05:28:20.793-07:00Trump and Obama's red line<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Trump's policy on Syria is being criticized
for inconsistency and inadequacy. No
doubt. His shifting stance is also far superior to the consistently inadequate (or worse)
policies of the oh-so-more-sophisticated EU leadership. Of course the main motive behind the
criticisms is hatred of Trump. Yet on
what might be thought the most morally significant foreign policy issue, Trump
is clearly streets ahead of Obama. Trump
bombed Assad. Obama left Syrians to
their agonies, calling that decision "<a href="http://time.com/4782309/barack-obama-syria-2013-chemical-weapons/">courageous</a>",
perhaps because he ran the risk of
people disliking him.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">When Obama let his red line slide, he
exhibited an impressive range of moral and political failings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First he welched on the most important
commitment of his administration.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then
he lacked the courage simply to reverse his stance:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>instead, he handed the decision to a Congress
which he knew would reverse it for him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Then he had the gall to represent his cowardly decision as bravery and
sagacity, when in fact it was based on timidity and a parochial ignorance of
the Syrian conflict.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In other words he
not only made disgusting decisions, but preened himself on their alleged
excellence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">As for Trump, he acts on impulse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He persistently showed, and still shows, a
desire to disengage from Syria.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet he
behaved like a human being.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was
appalled by the first chemical attack and when all the terribly moral Europeans
confined their reaction to ass-covering, hand-wringing expressions of <i>concern</i>,
Trump acted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He felt the need to counter
an outrage even though it ran contrary to his larger policy objectives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then he did it again which, inexplicably, is
called a one-off response.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(And that
without him, the high-minded Europeans would have done nothing:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>this isn't even open to discussion.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He may be inconsistent, but it is an
inconsistency born of decency, leading to a reaction morally superior to the
rest of the world's leaders', on a matter of the highest importance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">As for the accusation that his reaction is
inadequate, well, of course it is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What
would an adequate reaction be?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If
adequacy means stopping Assad's atrocities, it would require military intervention
on a scale that, given the Russian presence, might lead to a major war, with
some risk of a nuclear holocaust.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even
a slight danger of such an outcome means that an adequate response is out of
the question.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But to suppose that one
or two attacks have no value is wrong-headed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the first place, the weight of these attacks should not be
underestimated:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>they pose the
possibility (now almost the reality) of escalating responses if they don't have
their desired effect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the second
place, the attacks establish that violation of norms about chemical warfare
against civilians can trigger a military response, even when that response runs
counter to the foreign policy objectives of an outraged party.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This, arguably, sets a valuable precedent.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">In short, Trump showed more decency than
Obama, and his very inconsistency makes his reaction all the more
worthwhile.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He may be the worst
president ever in policy terms, but his humanity contrasts vividly with the
timid cruelty his idolized predecessor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Bombing Assad doesn't play to his electorate or indulge his prejudices
or further his objectives. It transcends those prejudices, sidelines those
objectives and honours an obligation to help even Arabs, human beings in
distress. That's more than all his cold-fish detractors and their mentors have to
show for themselves.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">It's not complicated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Either you leave innocents to die in agony,
or you don't.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Left to its own devices,
the rest of the world has shown the firmest, most consistent commitment to the
latter course of action.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Trump chose
the former.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That England and France
have, as always, done whatever the Americans want them to do hardly redounds to
their credit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />Michael Neumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01558892758943318577noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273076348938263308.post-31824566662316023802017-10-20T10:16:00.001-07:002017-10-20T10:16:29.494-07:00Did the West 'give up' on the Syrian rebels?<div class="MsoNormal">
In “How Assad’s Enemies Gave Up on the Syrian Opposition”, Aron
<a href="https://tcf.org/content/report/assads-enemies-gave-syrian-opposition/">Lund</a>
follows many other analysts in his account of how the West 'gave up' on Syria’s
rebels. The implication is that the West
tried to back them against Assad, but at long last found this well-meaning
effort both futile and ill-advised. The project produced a big mess!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That's at least highly misleading. The following argues that West never
seriously supported the rebels, so it can hardly be said that support should
never have been extended in the first place.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
1. Lund has a <i>New
York Times</i> report stating that there were "flights shipping military
equipment to Syria". Here he misspoke: without any sinister intent, he asserted what
he knows is false. Not one single flight
went to Syria. All flights went, as the
article states, to Turkey or Jordan.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
2. This is of the
highest significance, because it means that only a still-unknown proportion of
the 3500 tons shipped actually ended up in rebel hands. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
3. What we do know is
that there were many complaints that only a trickle of those arms made it
across the border: the deliveries were constantly and severely restricted to
bend rebel groups to the wishes of Turkey, and - especially - Jordan and the
US. For <a href="http://world.time.com/2013/03/05/syrias-many-militias-inside-the-chaos-of-the-anti-assad-rebellion/">example</a>:
“We need between 500-600 tons of
ammunition a week. We get between 30-40 tons. So you do the calculations.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
4. The overwhelming
majority of the arms used are of Soviet design.
Even ammunition tracked to outside sources is not linked to identifiable
US-backed shipments. Some of this
material certainly did come from the CIA operation, but there are no videos nor
any first-hand testimony of large deliveries crossing the Syrian border. In short there is no evidence that, contrary
to repeated rebel claims, they received large amounts of CIA-supplied weaponry,
as opposed to black-market purchases from numerous sources.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
5. There is also no
evidence, indeed no claim, that CIA training made a substantial
difference. The later Pentagon train-and-equip
program leaked small quantities of arms; the trained units were consistently
steered away from fighting Assad.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
6. Even if large
shipments actually ended up in rebel hands, these shipments did not afford the
rebels air cover: there were no useful MANPADS or other anti-aircraft
weapons. And of course in contrast to
the Western-backed Kurdish forces, no one gave the rebels air cover or close
air support. This, predictably, proved
decisive.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
7. Without such
support, the claim that Western supplies ever played a pivotal role in the
course of the war is implausible. The
rebels, in better days, obtained massive quantities of arms from the black
market and captured régime depots. These
seem quite sufficient to account for the rebels' periods of success.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
8. In short the
whole idea that the US and the West made any serious effort to overthrow Assad
is a non-starter. Western backers may
indeed have planned to overthrow him.
But between the plans and the implementation lay an almost impenetrable
barrier of reluctance to support the rebels who might have brought him
down. This barrier proved much more
consequential than the plans or even the arms delivery flights that supposedly
exacerbated the conflict.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
9. Where did this
reluctance come from? Lund rightly
says: "Though the Syrian president
was now widely reviled as a war criminal and held responsible for tens of
thousands of civilian deaths, the likely alternatives seemed to be either
stateless, jihadi-infested chaos or some sort of Talibanesque theocracy.
International enthusiasm for the opposition plummeted."<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Lund might have pointed out that, on all evidence, "the likely alternatives" would have been far better than Assad, particularly since the West had more than enough capacity to restrain any post-Assad 'chaos'. But this is the failure of every respectable, sober, well-informed Syria analyst. Should it have had any significant effect on Western policy, it is a lot to answer for.Michael Neumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01558892758943318577noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273076348938263308.post-83979589010286144932017-09-08T01:50:00.000-07:002017-09-10T02:14:09.314-07:00What about that Syria analysis taken down from the US Holocaust Museum Site?<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">Recently there has been a fuss about a
document entitled <i>Critical Junctures in
United States Policy toward Syria: An
Assessment of the Counterfactuals</i>.
It says it is part of a 'research project':<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="EN-CA">The project seeks
to conduct a systematic review of critical policy junctures in the Syrian
conflict, identify alternative policies that the US government plausibly could
have adopted at these junctures, and assess the likely effects of these
counterfactual actions on the conflict and associated atrocities against
civilians.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">It was removed from the web site of the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
It essentially concluded that nothing could be done about Syria, so that
Obama's policy decisions, while perhaps not optimal, would have made little
difference.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">Some have decided that this is a terrible
blow to the serious study of Syria. For
example <i>New York Magazine</i> did a
probing <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/09/why-did-the-holocaust-museum-cancel-its-syria-study.html">piece</a>
on the takedown, and on Twitter, Zack Beauchamp of VOX comments on a <i>Tablet</i> <a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/244567/holocaust-museum-pulls-study-absolving-obama-administration-for-inaction-in-face-of-syrian-genocide">article</a>
about the incident as follows: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="EN-CA"> Not a single quote in this piece contains a
substantive critique of the Holocaust Museum's study<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="EN-CA"> This seems like right-wing political
correctness: The study was pulled due to political pressure, not scholarly
missteps<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">The study is based on interviews with
respected Syria analysts or former US government officials. It purports to deliver mature thinking on the
situation, leading to, and I quote, "a deeper understanding". It seems that the contributors are serious
intellectuals who raise important issues that needed to be debated. Well OK, I downloaded the piece before it
was taken offline. I'll quote some of
what it says, and then deliver some of that substantive criticism it's thought
to deserve.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">I'm not doing this just to carp. I'm doing it because the West's self-righteous but timid response to one of the greatest atrocities of our times has been, all along,
diligently abetted and excused by these analysts. Their fateful opinions call for scrutiny.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">The study is built around "Five
critical junctures and associated counterfactuals". They are, in full:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="EN-CA">1. <b>Obama's August 2011 statement</b>: Most
interviewed for this paper identified Obama’s August 2011 statement that “the
time has come for President Assad to step aside” as the most consequential
juncture, the so-to-speak original sin. A more nuanced statement developed via
a thorough interagency process and accompanied by a well-conceived strategy
might have led to fewer atrocities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="EN-CA">2. <b>Clinton/Petraeus arming plan</b>: The
summer 2012 decision not to adopt the Clinton/Petraeus plan to vet and arm
“moderate” rebels is among the most contentious and yet least significant of
the critical junctures with respect to the issue of minimizing civilian deaths.
Implementing the plan might have proven counterproductive by extending the
duration of the conflict.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="EN-CA">3. <b>Chemical weapons "red line"</b>:
Obama’s September 2013 decision not to undertake standoff strikes to enforce
his “red line” against the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons stands as his
most controversial policy decision on Syria, and arguably of his entire
presidency. Conducting limited stand-off strikes followed immediately by
intensive diplomacy might have led to a reduction in the level of killing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="EN-CA">4. <b>Prioritizing ISIL over the Assad regime</b>:
In the late summer 2014, following ISIL’s “blitzkrieg” across Iraq and parts of
Syria, the Obama administration made a formal strategic shift prioritizing Iraq
and the fight against ISIL over counter-regime objectives in Syria.
Implementing a more muscular anti-regime policy as part of a broader counter-ISIL
strategy in Syria in 2014 is unlikely to have led to a lower level of
atrocities against civilians.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="EN-CA">5. <b>No-fly zone over all or part of Syria</b>:
The option to enforce a no-fly zone over all or part of Syria has been raised
at various times throughout the conflict, specifically in 2012, 2013, and 2015.
More creative options for enforcing a partial no-fly zone—perhaps over northern
Syria using standoff weapons or employing different tools—should have been given
greater consideration.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">According to the document, once you
consider the 'counterfactuals' associated with these 'junctures', you have to
conclude the following:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<b><span lang="EN-CA">No silver bullet</span></b><span lang="EN-CA">: No
single shift in policy options would have definitively led to a better outcome
in terms of the level of atrocities in Syria.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">The tone here evokes analytical rigor, but
the content, not so much.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">May I suppose that when you shift policy,
you move from one option to
another? 'No single shift' is quite a
claim: it implies that you might move to any possible option. So when you say 'no single shift' would have
definitely led to a better effect, you imply that no possible option would have
done so. So apparently whoever came up
with this 'study' thought that all possible options had been considered and
found wanting.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">Thought, or pretended to think. Did they really suppose they had considered
all possible options? It's clear that
there is one option they were dying to dismiss:
removing Assad, which they occasionally mention under the now-pejorative
label of 'regime change'. Yet this is
the only option that seems a serious candidate for a silver bullet: it's hardly surprising that the others are
found wanting, given they are carefully specified to have only limited
objectives. 'Regime change' isn't even
directly discussed, but introduced in the discussion of the first
'juncture'. And though the analysts seem
to think 'regime change' is a single option, there are many possible ways to
effect régime change: if you were out to
change a régime, you would of course consider a number of alternative
strategies. It is quite clear that the
analysts were not inclined to do anything of the sort.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">The possibility of régime change comes up
only in the 'counterfactual' associated with 'juncture 1', Obama's statement
that Assad should step aside. Here is
what the document says:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<b><span lang="EN-CA">Counterfactual
1</span></b><span lang="EN-CA">: <b>Make the statement, but back it up with a
well-conceived and well-resourced strategy. Advocates of this counterfactual
called for the development of a robust </b></span><b><span lang="EN-CA"> regime change strategy using a mixture of
military and non-military measures.</span></b><span lang="EN-CA"> The </span> assumption
undergirding this counterfactual focuses on minimizing the killing by removing Assad
as the key perpetrator behind Syria’s killing and atrocities, stressing the
importance of <span lang="EN-CA">aggressively pursuing regime change. Some
assumed that in making the statement the President </span>would commit to action. As one former
senior State Department official noted, “Not necessarily invasion and occupation, but other
means.”[34] Proponents of this policy option favored an earlier and more intense
use of indirect military intervention, primarily by arming the rebels, or
direct action short of outright invasion.</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span lang="EN-CA"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span lang="EN-CA">It is hard to imagine the viability of
this counterfactual given Obama’s antipathy toward regime </span>change and his election vow to withdraw
America from Middle East conflicts, not engage in a new one. Moreover, given the challenge and
complexity of regime change in Syria, it is difficult to
envision how this approach, to be successful, would not have required fairly
massive military intervention,
resulting in potentially far higher civilian deaths.</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">What does this tell us about the quality,
intentions and scope of the analyses?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">One of the reasons given for dismissing
this option is that Obama didn't like it.
But the claim was not that there was no silver bullet given Obama's
tastes. It was that no shift, whether or
not Obama liked it, would have done any good.
So this objection is besides the point.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">So what's left is: massive military intervention would be
counterproductive. Elsewhere in the
document support for this claim goes a little beyond this pronoun</span>cement that
success can't be imagined. We hear that:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="EN-CA">Given the
fractiousness of the armed opposition at that point, regime change in Syria by
2014–2015 could have led to an even greater level of violence and killing as
rival factions would compete for power. Moreover, the increased radicalization
of armed groups by that time might have led to the “catastrophic success”
scenario marked by the empowering of extremists who might have committed
further atrocities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="EN-CA">The unintended
consequences of this policy decision might have been significant, particularly with
respect to the level of killing and the duration of the conflict. This type of
intervention runs a much greater risk of escalation and a slide down the
“slippery slope” of deepening US military involvement and intensification of
conflict. This in turn might have led to greater killing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="EN-CA">Intensifying
military efforts against the regime likely would have been met with counter-escalation
by the regime and its allies, as well as broader destabilization across the
region.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">Does this amount to serious consideration
of the options? We are told that certain
bad things might have happened. This
introduces possibilities without assessing their actual probability. Yet that's part of exploring the truth of a
'counterfactual'. Are these just fears,
or real likelihoods?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">Throughout the debate on Syria, the warning
about bad outcomes have been amplified using two dubious techniques. The first is equivocation about the nature
of military intervention. The second is
the trick of dangling intervention when it seems to pose dangers, and yanking
it away when it might counter the dangers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">Consider first what 'military intervention'
means. The document makes it sound like
America would be deeply involved, and in a way that is true. But that's not the same thing as 'deepening
US military involvement', which I take it means the involvement of the US
military. The one does not imply the
other either in logic or in the realities of the situation. The US could be deeply involved, in a
'military intervention' if you like, without any US forces being deployed to
Syria at all, and without even some US-run train-and-equip program in Turkey
and Jordan.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">With the exception of Lebanon, which Israel
is deeply committed to keep hobbled, Syria has nothing but enemies in the
region, notably the Gulf States and Turkey.
(Jordan is at least no friend of Syria, but in any case will do exactly
whatever the US wants it to do.) In the
background lurks another enemy, Israel, with nuclear weapons. To effect régime change, the US did not have
to send its armed forces into Syria.
For the most part, what it had to do was simply drop all its opposition
to regional efforts to remove Assad. His enemies were prepared to support the rebels with massive military
aid; with US encouragement they would have been even more prepared to do
so. At most, the US might have had to
increase the air-to-air capacities in its numerous large bases in the
region. It's not even clear that that
would have been necessary. Israel, with
far fewer resources at its disposal, has used stand-off weapons to make a mockery of
the Syrian air force without even entering Syrian airspace. So it is, to use the document's phrase,
'difficult to imagine' how the US and regional powers could fail to reduce the
régime's air power to negligible levels, again without even entering Syrian
airspace. And in these circumstances,
it is also difficult to imagine anything but rebel victory.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">Here analysts jump in and speak of 'dangers'. Some of these are real, some are not. The idea that Assad could 'counter-escalate',
as suggested elsewhere in the document, is ludicrous. How?
With what? So it cannot be Assad
who is going to 'intensify' the conflict.
It can only be his allies, Russia and Iran/Hezbollah.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
Consider Russia first. It hasn't anything like the power arrayed against it in the region. If it has now introduced fairly important forces there, it is because the US allowed it ample time to react in the face of US-enforced inaction on the part of regional powers. Since we're doing counterfactuals, imagine that Turkey is heavily involved, as it certainly would be in this scenario. Turkey is a NATO power; Russia cannot attack it without risking catastrophe. So it's not clear that Russia would have any real choice in the matter.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">But suppose otherwise; suppose Russia was
sufficiently committed to its place in Syria to take enormous risks and expend
enormous resources. Since we're doing
counterfactuals, it seems quite likely that Russia could be induced to abandon
Assad instead. What Russia really wants
in the region is its one naval base outside the borders of the former Soviet Union: Tartous.
The anti-Assad coalition, including of course the US, could offer to
guarantee Russia perpetual access to the base, and the right to expand it as it
sees fit. And of course the US has much
more to offer. It could back the
lifting of sanctions on Russia, it could even accept the annexation of Crimea. It is 'difficult to imagine' that in the face
of such inducements, Russia would prefer a hot war in Syria.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">Given Russia's retirement from the stage,
the case of Iran is simpler. With no air
cover, Iran would not be in a position to do anything. It could make trouble elsewhere, but contrary
to popular belief, Iran is not an agressive power: in modern times it hasn't made war on anyone,
ever. Moreover Iran has a potentially
more useful base for its ambitions than Lebanon: the US, unwilling to deploy
the large ground forces it would need to run the place, has turned over
virtually all of southern Iraq to Iran.
But the US doesn't care that much if Iraq goes even further to hell, so
it could move against Iranian proxies there and in Syria if it felt so
inclined. So it is unlikely that Iran
would have the means or inclination to create any massive destabilization of
the situation, much less keep Assad in power.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">No doubt these suggestions would be met
with loud huffing and puffing from the analysts. But either you consider all options, or you
don't get to say nothing would have helped.
Please note, that is the issue:
not whether the option would be wise or moral or in some other sense
'acceptable', not whether it would have led to a better world, not whether it
would serve US or European interests, but whether it would have 'led to a
better outcome in terms of level of atrocities in Syria'. And clearly the 'scholarly' enterprise fails
here. It doesn't consider all the
options, and nothing it does consider permits the conclusion that 'regime
change' wouldn't have helped.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">So the first danger, escalation, is far
from established. The second danger is a
more realistic prospect. It is that the
'fractured' rebels will nurture or drift towards 'extremists'. Then, it seems, infighting and revenge
killing will produce "further atrocities'.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">That's not just likely; it's almost
certain. Very few wars end without
'further atrocities'. But it would be
bizarre to suppose that the anti-Assad coalition couldn't keep these to a level
orders of magnitude below what Assad has wrought.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For one thing, the coalition would continue
to enjoy absolute air superiority: the
sort of MANPADS the rebels possessed would not be any threat to the coalition's
aircraft. So no indiscriminate air
attacks, no barrel bombs. This alone
makes it much less likely that the rebels could inflict civilian casualties at
anything like the régime's scale. Air
power and cutting off supplies could do only so much to contain the rebels,
however; they would have plenty of weapons.
Possibly fuel supplies would limit their range. But analysts manifest obtuseness or
dishonesty when they suppose that, if the rebels wanted to commit massacres,
well... one just has to throw up one's
hands.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">This is plain nonsense. Given a coalition-backed victory, for the
first time there would be forces committed to preventing atrocities (though it
must be admitted, the Russians seem to do this a bit). These would both be forces fully aligned with
regional powers and under their supervision, and, if necessary, coalition
troops. Some of them might even be
Western troops. But the notion that
this would inevitably lead to some quagmire or spiral of intensification is
utterly implausible. Evacuations and
safe zones do not fit into such that sort of disaster scenario. This is peace-keeping, not
nation-building. There are many examples
of peace-keeping in war zones that haven't had the slightest tendency to
escalate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">In short here is a 'policy shift', an
option, that the analysts never considered, and had to consider if the
conclusion that no shift would help is to stand. Why didn't they? Since we are in the realm of speculation, I
would like to suggest why.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">These analysts do not shape their thinking
out of concern for the level of atrocities.
They are not concerned about Syrians, except in the sense that they are
concerned about Arabs running wild. Even
then, they are not concerned about what will happen in Syria. The analysts are concerned, and the record
shows this, about terrorism against the West.
They are concerned, despite many <a href="https://insufficientrespect.blogspot.fr/2013/06/manpads-for-syrian-opposition-danger-to.html" target="_blank">contrary considerations</a> they ignore,
about placing MANPADS in 'extremist' hands, and they are concerned that
extremists would establish a base from which they would attack Western targets.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">There are two problems with this. First, if that is the analysts’ dominant
concern, they should say so. The
document pretends, and specifies, that the only consideration for evaluating
strategies is minimization of atrocities.
If so, that some alternative raises the prospects of terror attacks on
the West has no weight at all. So the
document is undermined by dishonesty. In
the second place, if terror attacks are their concern, they should at least
consider the consequences of persisting in the strategy that has led to
terrorism against the West in the first place:
the toleration or, more often, strong support for every murdering,
torturing, secularist tyrant that has ever oppressed the peoples of the Middle
East. To pretend mature prudence without
even exploring the ramifications of these allegedly prudent conclusions simply
manifests the obliviously cruel attitudes that are a large part of the problem
in the first place.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">In other words, the suppressed document
offers nothing but excuses for inaction we have heard many times before, enhanced
with the effrontery of scholarly airs and pretentious sophistry. Perhaps, as an example of what is wrong with
Western thinking about the Middle East, it was not such a good idea to take the
document offline after all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">It remains only to offer suggestions as to what the document reveals about the mentality of the analysts.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">It is telling that the document's measure
of helpfulness is whether or not atrocities are reduced. This is to lower a veil of ignorance on the
Syrian conflict from the word go. When
three people were killed in the Boston Marathon bombing, that was an
atrocity. When 10 or twenty or thirty
or a hundred people have died in terrorist attacks in Europe, those were all
atrocities. 9-11, which killed fewer
that 3000, that was a massive, unforgettable atrocity. The West spares no efforts in its attempts to
reduce these horrors. What then are the
crimes of Assad, which involve the killing of perhaps 200,000 innocent
people? What are fates of those he
tortures to death in the tens of thousands - inserting rats in vaginas,
castrating children, letting someone lie tied up in a hallway until dead of
starvation?(*) What are the massacres he
sponsored, including slitting babies' throats? To speak vaguely of 'atrocities' misses a distinction that the
participants in this enterprise - given its sponsoring institution - ought to
have grasped. Assad is the sponsor, not
of mere atrocities, but of a full-scale holocaust. And to turn away from this realization is
just what makes the analysts think it absurd, adolescent, extreme to do
whatever it takes to destroy Assad and his régime, even bargains with Russia
and Iran, even placing a few more weapons in the hands of radical Islamists.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">Imagine if Assad was doing what he did to
white Europeans, or Jews, or Afro-Americans.
Would it then not seem a matter of the greatest urgency? But for these 'scholars', that would be
yielding to adolescent hysteria. These
were only Arabs. The matter - and the
whole document could not make this plainer - was not urgent at all. This carnage isn't worth risky scenarios,
that is, scenarios that offer even a slight, unproven, unquantified level of
risk, even if letting the carnage continue might carry with it still greater
risks. Such is the perspective of analysts
who invest themselves with the moral radiance of the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0in 0in 1.0pt 0in;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 1.0pt 0in; padding: 0in;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">(*) For references, see the appendix to <a href="http://insufficientrespect.blogspot.fr/2013/05/why-support-syrian-revolution_1.html">this</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Michael Neumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01558892758943318577noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273076348938263308.post-30735228061897657042017-08-20T09:28:00.001-07:002017-08-20T09:28:49.490-07:00Because we bomb them, not because they hate us<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span lang="EN-CA"> </span>Spain invades Iraq 2003; gets attacked; leaves 2004. No more
attacks. Spain goes into Syria in 2014; gets attacked.</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span lang="EN-CA">That looks like they bomb us because we bomb them. Yet many 'experts' and commentators
indignantly reject this explanation.
They say that ISIS' terrorism, like all radical Islamist terrorism, has
nothing to do with Western conduct in the Middle East or against Muslims: that's 'blaming the victims', although it
sounds more like blaming the victims' governments.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span lang="EN-CA">They say that Islamist terrorism is all about hate, not because we
bomb them but because we are who we are, liberal, democratic, Christian. Their motivation derives from dogma and
twisted psychology, not from the West's adventures in the Middle East.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span lang="EN-CA">In support of their claims they cite, ubiquitously, one and the same
passage from an ISIS online magazine, <i>Dabiq</i>. It reads like this:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN-CA">What’s important to understand here is
that although some might argue that your foreign policies are the extent of
what drives our hatred, this particular reason for hating you is secondary,
hence the reason we addressed it at the end of the above list. The fact is,
even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying
us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary
reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam. Even if
you were to pay jizya and live under the authority of Islam in humiliation, we
would continue to hate you. No doubt, we would stop fighting you then as we would
stop fighting any disbelievers who enter into a covenant with us, but we would
not stop hating you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span lang="EN-CA"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span lang="EN-CA">Is this enough support for the claim that Islamist terror is all
about theologically-charged hatred?
Let's look at two things - the evidence of the passage, and the evidence
contradicting it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<i><span lang="EN-CA">The evidence of the passage<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span lang="EN-CA">The passage is from an online ISIS magazine. People who use the quotation in support of
their theological-hatred theory don't tell you that the passage is also from
the magazine's <i>last</i> issue; <i>Dabiq</i> was replaced by another effort
called <i>Rumiyah</i>. No one cites anything similar from <i>Rumiyah</i>.
Whether this means anything, we don't know.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span lang="EN-CA">In fact there is a lot we don't know about just who speaks for whom
in ISIS. Some proponents scornfully
suggest that any such doubts come from poorly informed leftists, likely
superficial journalists.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span lang="EN-CA">Well, <a href="https://divinity.uchicago.edu/sightings/how-not-understand-isis-alireza-doostdar">here</a>,
at length, are the words of Alireza Doostdar, Assistant Professor of Islamic
Studies and the Anthropology of Religion at the University of Chicago Divinity
School:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN-CA">The vast majority of ISIS’ estimated
20,000-31,500 fighters are recent recruits and it is not clear whether and how
its leadership maintains ideological consistency among them. All told, our
sense of ISIS’ coherence as a caliphate with a clear chain of command, a solid
organizational structure, and an all-encompassing ideology is a direct product
of ISIS’ propaganda apparatus.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN-CA">We see ISIS as a unitary entity because
ISIS propagandists want us to see it that way. This is why it is problematic to
rely on doctrines espoused in propaganda to explain ISIS’ behavior. Absent more
evidence, we simply cannot know if the behaviors of the different parts of ISIS
are expressions of these doctrines.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN-CA">And yet, much of the analysis that we have
available relies precisely on ISIS’ propaganda and doctrinal statements. What
does this emphasis obscure? Here I will point out several of the issues I
consider most important.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN-CA">First, we lack a good grasp of the
motivations of those who fight for or alongside ISIS, so we assume that they
are motivated by Salafism and the desire to live in a caliphate. What
information we do have comes almost entirely from ISIS propaganda and
recruitment videos, a few interviews, and the occasional news report about a foreign
fighter killed in battle or arrested before making it to his or her
destination.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN-CA">Focusing on doctrinal statements would
have us homogenizing the entirety of ISIS’ military force as fighters motivated
by an austere and virulent form of Salafi Islam. This is how ISIS wants us to
see things, and it is often the view propagated by mainstream media.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN-CA">For example, CNN recently quoted former
Iraqi national security adviser Muwaffaq al-Ruba‘i as claiming that in Mosul,
ISIS was recruiting “Young Iraqis as young as 8 and 9 years old with AK-47s…
and brainwashing with this evil ideology.” A Pentagon spokesman is quoted in
the same story as saying that the U.S. was not intent on “simply… degrading and
destroying… the 20,000 to 30,000 (ISIS fighters)... It’s about destroying their
ideology”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN-CA">The problem with these statements is that
they seem to assume that ISIS is a <i>causa</i> <i>sui</i> phenomenon that has suddenly
materialized out of the thin ether of an evil doctrine. But ISIS emerged from
the fires of war, occupation, killing, torture, and disenfranchisement. It did
not need to sell its doctrine to win recruits. It needed above all to prove
itself effective against its foes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<i><span lang="EN-CA">Dabiq</span></i><span lang="EN-CA"> was, precisely, a propaganda magazine. Whether its statements capture the views of
most ISIS members, we do not know.
Perhaps these are not even the views of the leadership, but statements
designed to produce a certain effect in the audience. We certainly have no reason to assume that
the views expressed in this one passage represent the views of those who
actually conduct terror attacks. We are
often assured, after all, that these individuals are quite ignorant of Islam,
even irreligious. That hardly sounds
like their motivations must align with the theologically drenched orthodoxy of
a single passage in an on-line magazine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span lang="EN-CA">That's not all. What does the
article - not just the passage - actually say?
Users of the passage delight in pointing to the insistence that ISIS
members will continue to hate Islam whether or not the West stops bombing and
torturing Muslims.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span lang="EN-CA">One immediate reaction one might have is, well of course! Why on earth would anyone bombed or tortured cease hating the bombers and torturers after they stop? But to focus on hatred would be to ignore a
crucial distinction. The West's concern
is not about hatred. There is hatred
between various groups throughout the world.
These days, Catalonians seem to hate British tourists. American liberals hate Trump supporters. Many people hate hipsters or baby
boomers. Hatred is not what matters. It's whether, in this case, hatred engenders
what the article called 'fighting'. Even
then, that's not what really concerns the West.
The concern is not whether ISIS fights Western forces in the Middle East
or piggybacks on conflicts in Saharan Africa.
It's whether ISIS mounts terror attacks in Western countries. In other words, the focus on hatred is at two
removes from the West's real concerns: first, hatred doesn't mean fighting, and
second, fighting doesn't mean terror attacks on the West.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span lang="EN-CA">The distinctions do seem to matter if those who cite the passage
read, first to the end of the passage, and then to the end of the article. The passage ends, you may recall, like this:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN-CA">Even if you were to pay jizya and live
under the authority of Islam in humiliation, we would continue to hate you. No
doubt, we would stop fighting you then as we would stop fighting any
disbelievers who enter into a covenant with us, but we would not stop hating
you. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span lang="EN-CA"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span lang="EN-CA">Well, small comfort, you might say, because the West isn't about to
pay jizya and live under the authority of Islam. But note, first, that here there is a clear
distinction between continuing to hate and continuing to fight. Second, he talks about 'fighting', not about
attacks on Western civilians in the West.
There's quite a difference between the two.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span lang="EN-CA">Then there is the end of the article. It goes like this:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN-CA">We continue dragging you further and
further into a swamp you thought you’d already escaped only to realize that
you’re stuck even deeper within its murky waters… And we do so while offering
you a way out on our terms. So you can continue to believe that those
“despicable terrorists” hate you because of your lattes and your Timberlands,
and continue spending ridiculous amounts of money to try to prevail in an
unwinnable war, or you can accept reality and recognize that we will never stop
hating you until you embrace Islam, and will never stop fighting you until
you’re ready to leave the swamp of warfare and terrorism through the exits we
provide, the very exits put forth by our Lord for the People of the Scripture:
Islam, jizyah, or – as a last means of fleeting respite – a temporary truce.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span lang="EN-CA"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span lang="EN-CA">Though fans of the famous passage says it makes everything 'crystal
clear', the article doesn't seem that way.
To me it sounds like if the West stops killing Muslims, even if it
doesn't embrace Islam, it gets a temporary truce. That in turn sounds like: we won't bomb you if you stop bombing us, and
get out of our face. What does seem
clear is that the fighting, never mind terror attacks, can stop whether or not
'they hate us'. So hatred is hardly the
issue. Perhaps that is why there haven't
been Islamist terror attacks in so many countries with no military engagement
in the Middle East, among them many very Christian Latin and Central American
states, or sub-Saharan Christian nations like Zimbabwe and South Africa.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span lang="EN-CA">To summarize, we have here one passage which never refers to attacks
in the West on civilians. It says a lot
about hatred and fighting. It
distinguishes between the two. It seems
to suggest that you can have hatred without fighting. None of this offers strong support to the
claim that they bomb us because, for theological reasons, they hate us. It even faintly suggests the contrary
claim: that they bomb us because we bomb
them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span lang="EN-CA">So much for the evidence of this one passage - the crown jewel of
the 'they bomb us because they hate us' crowd.
It doesn't seem like this one passage tells us anything conclusive about
the people who actually do bomb 'us', and it doesn't seem like the passage even
nails down the connection between hatred-charged propagandists and the actual
terrorists.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span lang="EN-CA">What then about evidence opposed to the theorists who cite this one
passage?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<i><span lang="EN-CA">The opposing evidence<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span lang="EN-CA">The opposing evidence is abundant, clear, and in my view
decisive. Every major terrorist attack
on the West, from 2001 on, has offered as justification: we bomb you because you bomb us. Here are some passages that support this
claim.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<i><span lang="EN-CA">9-11</span></i><span lang="EN-CA">, <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/bin-laden-claims-responsibility-for-9-11-1.513654">where</a>
the reference to 'freedom' has to do with Al Qaeda's old objection the bases in
the Gulf and the US fleet, both used for air attacks on Muslim militants:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN-CA">The militant Islamic group decided
"we should destroy towers in America" because "we are a free
people... and we want to regain the freedom of our nation," said bin
Laden, dressed in yellow and white robes and videotaped against a plain brown
background.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<i><span lang="EN-CA">9-11 again</span></i><span lang="EN-CA">: On 7 October 2001, Osama
bin Laden issued the following <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/may/02/bin-laden-war-words-quotes">statement</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN-CA">There is America, hit by God in one of its
softest spots. Its greatest buildings were destroyed, thank God for that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN-CA">There is America, full of fear from its
north to its south, from its west to its east. Thank God for that. What America
is tasting now is something insignificant compared to what we have tasted for
scores of years. Our nation [the Islamic world] has been tasting this
humiliation and this degradation for more than 80 years. Its sons are killed,
its blood is shed, its sanctuaries are attacked, and no one hears and no one
heeds." <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<i><span lang="EN-CA">July 7th attacks, London</span></i><span lang="EN-CA">:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN-CA">1210: A website linked to al-Qaeda carries
a <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/5032756.stm">statement</a> saying
it has carried out a "blessed raid" in London "in retaliation
for the massacres Britain is committing in Iraq and Afghanistan".<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<i><span lang="EN-CA">Madrid</span></i><span lang="EN-CA">:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN-CA">The man on the tape <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/mar/14/spain.terrorism3">says</a>:
'We declare our responsibility for what happened in Madrid exactly
two-and-a-half years after the attacks on New York and Washington. This is an
answer to the crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. If your injustices do not stop
there will be more if god wills it.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span lang="EN-CA"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<i><span lang="EN-CA">Nice</span></i><span lang="EN-CA">:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN-CA">In a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/17/world/europe/isis-nice-france-attack.html?mcubz=0&_r=0">statement</a>
on Saturday on its radio station, the Islamic State referred to Mr. Lahouaiej
Bouhlel as “a soldier” who had responded to the group’s call “to target states
participating in the crusader coalition that fights the caliphate.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN-CA">In 2014, the Islamic State’s spokesman,
Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, called on the group’s followers to attack Westerners in
retaliation for strikes by the United States-led coalition fighting the Islamic
State in Iraq and Syria. He has repeatedly singled out France, which is part of
the coalition, as a main enemy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span lang="EN-CA"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<i><span lang="EN-CA">Paris</span></i><span lang="EN-CA">:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN-CA">Several ISIS supporters <a href="http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/619363/Islamic-State-ISIS-Twitter-Paris-attacks">celebrated</a>
the horror attacks using the sick hashtag 'ParisIsBurning'.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN-CA">One said: "God is great and thank God
for these lone wolf attacks. At least 100 hostages and countless wounded."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN-CA">His tweet was sent from the Kuwait port of
Mina Abdulla, according to Twitter's location settings.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN-CA">Another added: "Oh God, burn Paris as
you burned the Muslims in Mali, Africa, Iraq, Syria, and Palestine."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<i><span lang="EN-CA">Paris, again</span></i><span lang="EN-CA">:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN-CA">A <a href="http://www.thenational.ae/world/europe/deadly-paris-attacks-may-be-just-the-beginning#full">statement</a>
in ISIL’s name later claimed responsibility, saying the attacks were in
retaliation for French air strikes against its positions in Syria.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span lang="EN-CA">These are not propaganda pieces in a magazine. They are mostly from people who actually
planned or conducted the attacks. Even
when they are couched in religious language, the motives are deterrence and
retaliation, both rational by Western standards, or revenge, entirely
commonplace in Western morality. No
doubt they are based on gross oversimplications of why the West 'attacks
Muslims'. Gross oversimplification is
hardly absent from the moral and strategic discourse of Western 'experts'.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span lang="EN-CA">If they bomb us because we bomb them, perhaps we should turn down
the self-righteousness and piety a notch.
We might also stop fixating on 'hate'.
There is nothing sick or twisted about disliking getting blown apart,
and hitting back. There are no mysteries
to be unveiled about 'radicalization'. I
don't presume to offer suggestions about how these conclusions, coupled with
some adult understanding of what the West has done, should shape strategy. But it might be a first step to stop
supporting, directly or indirectly, every murdering, torturing régime in the
Middle East. Another step might be to
stop military operations which do no good.
Whatever’s best, an understanding of your enemy is probably not a bad
idea.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Michael Neumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01558892758943318577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273076348938263308.post-89198738151491964512017-08-16T09:43:00.000-07:002017-08-16T09:43:06.436-07:00August 2017: The News CycleThe news cycle resembles one of those disturbing, dramatic medieval landscapes. This one is informed with some enigmatic message conveyed by the placement of its elements.<br />
<br />
At the center, but not dominating it, is Trump. Almost all of the painting concerns him. Groups animatedly argue about some utterance of his, or some failure to utter something, or some utterance that came too late, or didn't. One corner section of foreground displays some fighting - not a bloody battle but there is someone dead on the ground. In another corner stand mythical figures, the characters of the Game of Thrones. Interlaced with all this, like flitting birds, are vignettes of racism or sexual misconduct. Someone who really has everything - fame, fortune, talent, beauty - had her ass grabbed; there was a trial. Someone said 'nigger', but the saying is implied; it cannot be depicted. Some did or did not go to this or that parade. On some tiny bit of canvas there is a toilet; it refers to a dispute about who can use it.<br />
<br />
What then lies in the distant background? Three hundred dead in a mudslide in Sierra Leone; they are barely a smudge. A sea dotted with thousands of drowning people. Many black lives lost, but they didn't matter. We also see giant icebergs drifting, scorching cities, arctic fires, and in another far corner, the Middle East, hundreds of thousands murdered; thousands more tortured to death. The level of detail is incredible given how, by the standard of column-inches, these depictions must be almost microscopic.<br />
<br />
Some things you might expect in the landscape aren't there at all; they are too small to represent. The prison populations, the unemployed, the people on food stamps, the meth cookers, they might rate a flick of paint, not enough to bring recognition. Far off, the Thai slave trawlers, the world's torture chambers, the Rohingya, one could go on and on... nothing. For the millions who have died in the Congo, year in year out, not one speck.<br />
<br />
What is the meaning of this? It is not that people don't care about the catastrophes and atrocities. Contrary to so much moralizing, anyone will tell you that three hundred black lives, even in Africa, matter more than one white life in Charlotteville. Anyone will tell you that the Syrian holocaust is vastly more important than who grabbed Taylor Swift's ass. Anyone, one hopes, will acknowledge that climate change matters more than toilet disputes. Nobody thinks the theft of Game of Thrones episodes is a world-shattering crisis. There is nothing wrong with people's real priorities.<br />
<br />
No, the picture quietly suggests those over-crowded rats who savage one another. They cannot affect their environment, so they fixate on one another. Trump, for the left as well as the right, is a hope substitute. He is something someone might possibly affect, either to help or to hurt. When he was elected, some of his opponents said they would be - how mortifying - 'diamond-hard' in opposition, on the streets in the hundreds of thousands to fight his agenda. But it was always clear that going into the streets, in the hundreds of thousands, would achieve nothing, not even in defense of the Paris Agreement which also, truth be told, will almost certainly achieve nothing. No marches and no computer classes will create jobs and bring better lives to the rust belt. No street theatre will get many thousands of unjustly incarcerated black people out of jail. No one expects anyone to devote enough resources and political will, let alone intelligence, to help Africa or the Middle East.<br />
<br />
Indeed politics itself is done. For ten years I taught courses on democracy at a university in Canada, often thought to have one of the world's best democratic societies. I was critical; I hoped for students to defend the institution. Never, in ten years, did I find one single student who believed democracy was worthwhile. The despair we feel goes much deeper than what's discovered in polls; it manifests itself in our focus. That is why we obsess about terror, sin, racism, and generally speaking the evil hearts of our neighbors. We cannot see a way out of the cage, so we lash out at our fellow rats.<br />
<br />
We certainly will find no way out if we don't look. We shock one another, but that is no excuse for wallowing in indignation. Demoralized as we may be, we still need to reconsider how to change the landscape in which we are all so shocked.Michael Neumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01558892758943318577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273076348938263308.post-711142343155759552017-08-10T23:13:00.000-07:002017-08-13T05:09:34.987-07:00Heller's right about the rebels and wrong about Syria.Sam Heller is <a href="https://warontherocks.com/2017/08/a-deadly-delusion-were-syrias-rebels-ever-going-to-defeat-the-jihadists/" target="_blank">quite correct</a>. It is a myth that the FSA ever was or ever had a prospect of being an essential counter-terrorist force. He is also correct in saying others performed better. But you can drive a truck through what he infers from these undeniable truths.<br />
<br />
First, the FSA isn't an essential counter-terrorism force because no Syrian force is essential. That's because almost <i>any</i> Syrian force will likely get about the same results if adequately supported. It is either myopic or disingenuous to hold up the superior success of the Kurdish SDF as some significant fact about the relative capabilities of the Kurds versus the rebels. The rebels never had anything remotely resembling the US air support, special forces, intel, and equipment lavished on the SDF. Perhaps that's why, in Heller's world, the SDF seems more 'motivated' to fight ISIS than the rebels. The most he's entitled to say is that we haven't any idea whether or not the FSA would, comparably supported, have done as well.<br />
<br />
The only anti-ISIS elements that can be considered essential are Iran's regular and irregular forces. After all, the West wouldn't dream of putting significant numbers of ground troops at risk; that wouldn't go down well with the voters. No other regional power offers anything like the resources Iran commits. To talk about who's essential without acknowledging this plain fact displays a will to distort the region's realities.<br />
<br />
Heller's amplifies his righteous indignation by attempting to outbid other analysts in the who's-freaking-out-more-about-terrorism sweepstakes. Yes, Jabhat al Nusra used to cooperate with ISIS. Yes, the FSA did a bit too. Yes, all rebels at some point cooperated with Nusra, & probably will again. However the issue he apparently tries to address is whether the rebels, not only in the past but today, are a credible anti-ISIS force. Are they?<br />
<br />
Well, nothing changes your mind about people like them constantly trying to wipe you out. That's what ISIS tries to do to the rebels, with some success. So any rebel groups - if, as Heller seems to say, reliability is an issue - are entirely reliable ISIS opponents. The US could shower them with weapons and air support and no, they wouldn't suddenly switch sides and fight for the Caliphate. Does this really need saying? If Heller is worried that the rebels would use this stuff to fight Assad, he needs to tell us why he thinks it would be a shame that someone, at least, opposed a murderer orders of magnitude worse than ISIS.<br />
<br />
Lastly, Heller follows the analysts he likes to dump on by suggesting that the rebels are unreliable counter-terrorist forces, not just because (contrary to fact) they are soft on ISIS, but also because they are soft on Nusra. Here he sinks low. He counts Nusra as terrorist because, five years ago, they set off bombs in Assad-controlled areas. Every party in the region has knowingly killed civilians at some point. Since US air attacks are conducted with the certain knowledge that many civilians will die, it's fair to say that, after Assad & Company, no one does this more than the US. But the plain fact is that, for the past two years at least, Nusra has caused as few or fewer civilian casualties than anyone else. There is also, despite claims to the contrary, <a href="http://insufficientrespect.blogspot.fr/2016/02/get-serious-about-removing-assad.html" target="_blank">no credible basis</a> to warnings that they plan to attack the West. So to call Nusra terrorist is to place one squarely in Humpty-Dumpty's camp: "a word means anything I want it to mean."<br />
<br />
At the heart of Heller's 'anger' lies a hatred, not of terrorism, but of Nusra's extreme social<br />
conservatism. You can hate this all you want, but someone posing as a harsh realist should acknowledge that Nusra's attitudes are shared by a large portion of Syria's population. The record of militant opposition to the Assads, going back to the 1980s, strongly suggests that the choice in Syria has always been between Assad and 'radical' Islamists: indeed Heller's claims support that view. No matter how distasteful that choice, the scale of Assad's atrocities dictate a preference for the Islamist alternative. The 'caution' and 'honesty' that drives analysts to cry for Nusra's blood is - if we're being realists - nothing more than de facto support for a mass murderer.Michael Neumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01558892758943318577noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273076348938263308.post-62317395773554086952017-07-15T00:00:00.001-07:002017-07-15T00:00:51.461-07:00Forget the 'child soldiers' defense of Omar Khadr<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">We hear <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2010/10/15/omar-khadr-military-commission-trial-ex-child-soldier">confident
claims</a> that Omar Khadr should have been treated as a child soldier, as if
international law imposed some such obligation on the US. It doesn't. The UN convention on the rights of the child
binds only its ratifiers. The US (not to
mention the Taliban) never ratified the convention. Since child soldiers appear only as an
'optional protocol' to the convention, the US can hardly have incurred an obligation
to respect its provisions or heed signatories' complaints.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">But that's not the most troubling aspect of
the child soldiers' defense. The
defense, even if valid, essentially abandons the field to United States'
mouthpieces. It suggests that but for
his age, Omar Khadr would have been guilty as charged. If you suppose his age is the only legal
reason for letting him go free, the implication is that the US would otherwise
be within its rights to convict and punish him for war crimes. This is arrant nonsense. Omar Khadr, child or adult, may not have been
justified in fighting the Americans, and the Americans may have been justified
in fighting him; indeed in their invasion of Afghanistan. But the American invasion of Afghanistan was
certainly <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=787985" target="_blank">illegal</a>, so to accuse Omar Khadr of war crimes is mere impertinence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">Invading another country is, under
international law, legal only in urgent, imminent self-defense - that is, if it is undertaken to fend off an
attack known to be conducted in hours or days, not months or years. The US never even claimed this. Even if they had, the idea that bombing and
attacking the Taliban, who had offered to turn Bin Laden over given evidence of
his guilt, isn't even a remotely plausible case of 'staving off'. How would bombing and attacking the Taliban
have disrupted Al Qaeda plans, if these plans were so far advanced that an
attack was truly imminent? You stop an
attack by attacking or capturing the attackers, not by waging war against some
people who were sort of associated with them.
The invasion might have been a reasonable long-term strategy to combat a
broad terrorist threat, but that doesn't even come close to urgent self-defense
against an imminent attack by an underground, internationally based movement - one which wasn't known to be on the brink of launching such an attack. Again, to be clear: the invasion might have been 'justified' in
some broad sense of the term. It
certainly wasn't legal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">If the invasion wasn't legal, resistance to
the invasion was at least not illegal:
nothing in international law forbids countering an illegal attack. So when Omar Khadr tossed a grenade, not at
civilians, but at heavily armed illegal invaders who had attacked his position,
the idea that he could have been committing any kind of 'war crime' is
ludicrous. Stop letting him off as a
child soldier. Start noticing that as a
member of a force countering illegal state violence, he was entirely within his
rights under international law.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Michael Neumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01558892758943318577noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273076348938263308.post-85138784218935690112017-05-18T08:05:00.000-07:002017-05-19T03:21:33.916-07:00Syria isn't complicated<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
It's sometimes said that Syria is complicated, or at least beset by incoherent alliances. It isn't that complicated if you accept that some of the allies passionately deny they're allied.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Bullshit aside, there are three sides in Syria, each opposing the other two (so, yes, just a little complicated). They are:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
1. The rebels, Turkey.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
2. ISIS<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
3. Assad, Russia, Iran, the Syrian Kurds (those represented by the PKK affiliate, the YPG), the US, Australia, Canada, the EU, Jordan, plus some less involved parties like Egypt. Were the term not already taken, this group might be called The Coalition.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
One of these parties, ISIS, needs no explaining as far as alliances are concerned. ISIS has no allies. As for the rest, explanation is a straightforward matter of ignoring statements and observing actions.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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This approach clarifies relations between the rebels and Turkey. Turkey and the Free Syrian Army undertake joint operations in northern Aleppo. Some rebels don't want Turkish troops on Syrian soil, and they sound like they are enemies of Turkey. But even these rebels want and get <a href="http://warisboring.com/russia-bombed-its-own-allies-in-syria/"><u>indirect support</u></a> from Turkey or <a href="https://counterjihadreport.com/tag/jabhat-al-nusra/"><u>via Turkey</u></a>, so despite the trash talk and occasional confrontations they are pretty much allies.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
So most of the explaining has to do with the third group, which developed in the last couple of years, partly as a reaction to the expansion of ISIS.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
First, the EU and the US are enemies of Turkey, the NATO link notwithstanding. The US and the EU have never shown the smallest inclination to defend Turkey against Assad or Russia. They have instead protected Turkish expatriates associated with the very serious, very bloody coup attempt of 2016. They have also backed the armed Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey. They do this by supplying <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-plans-to-supply-antitank-weapons-to-kurdish-fighters-in-syria-1494895595"><u>large quantities of arms</u></a> to the insurgents' Syrian affiliate. Like Russia, the US has <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/06/us-russian-troops-patrol-neighboring-villages-syria/"><u>installed troops</u></a> to block the expansion of Turkish/rebel operations. In other words if you simply ignore a bunch of verbiage divorced from reality, the active campaign against the Turkish government could hardly be more obvious.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Second, the US is allied with Assad, Russia, and Iran. It bombs ISIS assets engaged in attacking Assad in the Deir Ezzor region. In supporting the Kurdish YPG, it supports a force whose alliance with Assad is day by day establishing itself as an <a href="https://www.nso-sy.com/Details/383/Assad-soldiers-spend-their-vacations-in-YPG-areas-who-force-defectors-to-join-it-or-handed-over-to-regime/en"><u>open secret</u></a>. Moreover the US is dedicated to destroying the only remaining serious armed opposition to Assad, the (anti-ISIS) radical Islamists. Again like <a href="http://www.eurasiareview.com/03042017-syria-russian-airstrikes-target-rebel-positions-in-idlib/"><u>Russia</u></a>, it regularly conducts <a href="http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2017/02/pentagon-11-al-qaeda-terrorists-killed-in-airstrikes-near-idlib-syria.php"><u>air</u></a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/17/syria-mosque-airstrike-kills-dozens-of-civilians-near-aleppo"><u>strikes</u></a> against these factions, a practice instituted already years ago. The EU goes along with all of this.*<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The motive for supporting Assad is extreme paranoia about association between rebel groups and Al Qaeda. But why the US and the EU support Assad is not at issue here. The point is, they do in fact support him.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Yes, years ago, the US CIA actually armed rebel groups that actually fought Assad. This is very <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33997408"><u>old</u> <o:p></o:p></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span class="MsoHyperlink"><a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33997408">news</a></span>. As of about three years ago, US support for these groups, now via the Pentagon, was accorded on condition that these groups cease to rebel - that is, that they fought only ISIS, not Assad. US and Jordanian relations with formerly rebellious 'rebel' groups is now entirely confined to <a href="https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/NewsReports/566514-daraa-rebels-ordered-to-stop-fighting-syria-regime-report"><u>restraining</u></a> their anti-Assad operations <a href="http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/syriasource/the-moc-s-role-in-the-collapse-of-the-southern-opposition"><u>as much as possible</u></a>. Occasionally, especially in the south around Daraa, these groups do attack Assad, but feebly, because always without US and Jordanian backing.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Since the US is allied with Assad, it is also allied with Russia and Iran. The US and Russia mount air attacks on the very same rebel groups. US operations against these groups are a minor adjunct to very serious régime and Iranian operations against them. The US is also very closely allied with Iran in its Iraqi anti-ISIS campaigns. Again, verbiage to the contrary does nothing to obscure these realities.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Exactly why things have turned out this way is another story. Essentially the US has decided that its allies are the best bet for over-running all of ISIS' holdings. Probably that's correct. However there is no question that by at least one powerful objective measure - civilians killed, tortured, maimed - Assad is not the least but the greatest evil. Many also argue that to prefer this evil, to back yet another pathologically sadistic secularist is, in the medium or long term - hell, in the all-but-extremely-short term - hardly the strategy most likely to blunt anti-Western Islamist extremism. This piece isn't intended to engage in this debate. It just seeks to undermine the pretense that the debate is about something complicated.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
------<o:p></o:p></div>
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* It appears that Trump's missile strike in response to an Assad chemical attack was a momentary outburst of decency, not a policy change. The May 18th strike on a régime/Shia convoy at Tanf was stated to be a ground commander's response to a threat, again, not a change of policy. The US claimed it happened after Russian attempts to dissuade the convoy from its course.<o:p></o:p></div>
Michael Neumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01558892758943318577noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273076348938263308.post-26266870164997228692017-02-14T21:50:00.001-08:002017-02-14T21:50:41.548-08:00Should we worry about the Muslim Brotherhood?<div>
Should we worry about the Muslim Brotherhood</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Hassan Hassan warns that the Brotherhood is <a href="http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/the-brotherhood-must-not-be-seen-as-moderates" target="_blank">not moderate</a>. His warning is based entirely on the pronouncements of one associated cleric, Yussuf al Al Qaradawi. This, frankly, is not only ill-founded but dangerous.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Al Qaradawi, not a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, said suicide bombing was "permissible for Palestinians". He restricted the practice to groups, not individuals, but in 2014 extended the permission to "civil wars in the Middle East", in particular Syria. Hassan Hassan said this let the genie out of the bottle.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Suicide bombing in the Arab world goes all the way back to the spectacular attack on the US marine barracks in Beirut, in 1983. In Palestine it goes back at least to 1996, five years before Al Qaradawi's original fatwa, so the cause-effect relation doesn't even get started. He could have made it more prevalent, or not; neither Hassan Hassan nor, anyone else has the slightest idea. What we do know is that no member of the Muslim Brotherhood in its main contemporary incarnations, in Egypt and Tunisia, engaged in a Muslim Brotherhood suicide bombing campaign. Since both Brotherhood movements renounced violence of any kind, it's a little hard to see how Al Qaradawi's dastardly influence operated within the Brotherhood framework. Yet Hassan Hassan seemingly wants to blame the Brotherhood, not only for Al Qaradawi's pronouncements, but for suicide attacks all over the world, even in Bangladesh, where the organizations involved have nothing to do with the Brotherhood.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So we are asked to believe that all branches of the Brotherhood are scary because a cleric, not a member of the Brotherhood but an 'intellectual influence' on the Brotherhood, approved of suicide attacks. In support of this position, we are to note some suicide attacks which had no connection with the Brotherhood, some of which took place in parts of the world in which the Brotherhood has no presence. We are to fear the Brotherhood because of a pronouncement of this cleric. The pronouncement is fearful because his theology purportedly encourages suicide attacks which, however, are quite adequately explained as a <a href="http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/suicide-attacks-are-the-weapons-of-the-weak" target="_blank">weapon of the weak</a>, not as a response to some johnny-come-lately theological pronouncement. This is not reasoning but fear-mongering. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It gets worse. Though Al Qaradawi said suicide bombing was permitted in Palestine, he retracted the permission as, he said, conditions had changed. Hassan Hassan warns that he did not "disapprove of the practice in general". Apparently this is meant to suggest that the Muslim Brotherhood is soft on terrorism, or covertly pro-terrorist, or something like that. Yet today the majority of suicide bomb attacks occur in Syria, a country to which Hassan Hassan draws our attention. These attacks are carried out on military targets during assaults, which in turn are part of military offensive or even defensive operations. They do not fit most definitions of terrorism.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If we are to be cautioned about the Brotherhood, how about this? Their greatest success has been in Egypt, where they renounced violence almost forty years ago, where they were robbed of their electoral victory and then massacred. In Tunisia, minus the massacre, something very similar happened. Now the Brotherhood is hunted, persecuted. Then analysts insist the Brotherhood is scary, dangerous: they sign on to a demonisation that can only lead - we do live in the real world - to more arrests, more killings, more torture, all of it completely unjustified. Ask yourself then, which pronouncements are likely to encourage 'radicalisation'? Which counsels are likely to undermine moderation? What warnings are likely to become self-fulfilling prophecies?</div>
Michael Neumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01558892758943318577noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273076348938263308.post-58045155277116962016-11-28T06:37:00.001-08:002016-11-30T06:33:34.626-08:00Racial sewage: Syria and the West<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Racism runs like sewage underneath Western attitudes to Syria. It is not obvious, and not the sort we endlessly uncover and deplore. But it is key to an understanding of how the catastrophe could happen.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">What makes Syrian lives worth so much less than nothing? It is not Islamophobia or what, inaccurately, is labeled racism against Muslims. Islamophobia is widespread in the West, and it may shape Western policy once Trump - and perhaps LePen, or Fillon, or Frauke Petry take power. But they are not in power now and they are not responsible for the West's worse-than-nothing response to sadism and slaughter on a truly historic scale. Obama, Hollande, Merkel and other diversity-worshiping Western leaders are responsible. They and all their terribly nice supporters don't hate Muslims.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Quite the contrary. Decent People all over the West deplore Islamophobia with all their hearts; after all it's such a low-class sentiment. They are so self-reproachingly reverential about Srebernica's massacre of Muslims, you fear they'll never recover. They also show deep love for the Kurds, even those aligned with the monstrous Syrian régime. Perhaps they even know the Kurds are Muslims.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">No, Decent People don't hate Muslims. And the policymakers deplore atrocities committed by Muslims only when ideology demands it. In 1965, Muslims murdered between 600,000 and a million Indonesian communists. No one minded much, then or ever since. More recently Chechen Islamists were able to commit quite vicious acts of terrorism against Russians, which was ok, because that was the Russians' fault.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Palestinian terror, by contrast, doesn't get the red carpet treatment, even among the most bleeding-heart 'supporters' of the Palestinian cause. In Syria, ISIS arouses horror like no other; the whole world goes to war. Assad can kill literally ten times as many, nothing happens. Why is that?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It's not because of any political imperatives. Before Syria became a charnel house, it was a pariah, an ally of the detested Iranian régime, the main supporter of the terrorist group Hezbollah, and the enemy of that beacon of democracy, Israel. Why, then?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Palestinians and Syrians are, on dubious but widely accepted definitions, Arabs. Assad is as un-Arab as his secularism, his UK education, and his London-born wife can make him. He is as un-Arab, indeed, as the West's darlings, the Jordanian rulers, with their thoroughly Westernized ways and wives. This matters. It's not that the Decent People of the West hate Arabs, any more than they hate spider monkeys. It's just that they can't really see Arabs as part of the human race.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Consider the evidence. 6000 terribly human, utterly important Muslims die in Srebernica, but they are Europeans. Compare this with the deaths that don't matter in the Middle East. The thousand unarmed protesters slaughtered by Sisi, out in the open before the eyes of the world. The million Iraqis who died in the shadows of Western press coverage. The 175,000 who died in Algeria. The long, bloody tyrannies in Tunisia and Libya, and well before the current holocaust, Hafez Assad's mass killings in Hama, 1982. Even black people are thought to deserve at least tears for their agonies, in Biafra, in Nigeria, in Ethiopia, in Sudan, most of all in that locus of Western breast-beating, Rwanda, but Arabs? Frankly, they can just fuck off and die.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Look too at the West's allies: the more Arab they are, the more they are detested. Decent People hate the Saudis and look on the Gulf States generally as, well, a bunch of jerks. Already in the 16th Century, Francis I of France saw fit to enter into a military alliance with the Muslim Turks. Two centuries later, Montesquieu saw much to emulate in Muslim and Ottoman ways, but thought Arabs were the dregs of humanity. The Enlightenment could admire the Persians as well. But the Arabs, never. Perhaps their wave of conquest so appalled the Westerners, they never got over it. Only a few rogue Englishmen and women in the 20th Century, from Gertrude Bell to T.E.Lawrence and Wilfred Scawen Blunt, could sympathize, and even admire something in Arab culture. Their voices fell on deaf ears.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Racism against Arabs helps explain why even the most professedly anti-Assad pundits and analysts, to a man, would never support giving the rebels serious arms, and especially not MANPADS. Whatever the 'solution' to the Syrian 'problem', it's something for the Great White Powers, not the excitable little Arabs who - all of them - would do God knows what with grownup weaponry. (Instead, the 'anti-Assad' commentators have the effrontery to propose 'concrete plans' they know with absolute certainty will never be adopted.) Arabs, in the eyes of their Western 'supporters', are incapable of autonomous activity. They can't be trusted to run their own affairs. The only Arabs who get serious military equipment are those who can pay fabulous sums - however low the Arab race, their money's still good.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The point of this exercise is not to excoriate Westerners yet again. Anti-Arab racism needs noticing because it explains not only Western policies, but Western attitudes and especially the attitudes of enlightened, intelligent Western 'analysts'.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Assad is a killer and torturer on a level with Pol Pot or Idi Amin, or the butchers of Rwanda, in savagery far exceeding even swine like Pinochet, the Greek colonels, or the Argentine junta. Yet he is regarded like the latter, not the former. No one talked of compromise, accommodation, with the first bunch. No one had nice interviews with them. No one thought that well, maybe after all, keeping them in power would be the least bad option. No political scientists worried about their sovereignty or their place in the international order. No analysts preened themselves on their Olympian neutrality between the butchers and those resisting them. No nation bombed resistance groups because someone somehow managed to imagine they might someday possibly pose some danger to the West. Above all, no one thought that, while the leaders of the massacres should be deposed, it might be best if their administrations be kept in place: public order, you know.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The best, simplest explanation of why the monsters of Syria get a free pass is that their victims are Arabs. Muslim lives, black lives, Cambodian lives may matter. Arab lives do not. And the next time Arabs look for even the most minimal decency from the West - including from the Decent People who deplore Islamophobia - they would do well to remember this. In the West, their agonies serve only to invigorate the careers of professional Middle Eastern experts.</span>Michael Neumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01558892758943318577noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273076348938263308.post-75387705883300533612016-08-30T22:10:00.000-07:002016-08-30T22:10:20.501-07:00Is Turkey 'difficult to work with'?<div class="MsoNormal">
Many abhor
the Assad régime and say that 'something must be done'. This typically means 'by People like Us',
Westerners who know how to behave morally -
an odd restriction given the only world leader consistently to support
the rebels against Assad is Erdogan, the president of Turkey. Western leaders (contrary to the left's
'anti-imperialist' faith) will never do anything against Assad. They don't want to confront Russia and they
like Assad's hostility to all Islamists - as do their electorates.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Yet Turkey
is officially allied with these Western powers.
They incessantly reproach Turkey for not doing enough about ISIS - even
though, one would think, the whole Western alliance plus Russia plus the Iraqi
Kurds plus Iran and its Iraqi proxies should be able to get the job done
without Turkey's help. No matter. Because Turkey opposes America's Syrian
proxy, an affiliate of the Kurdish PKK, Erdogan is treated like a naughty boy -
a 'difficult ally'. This slant does much
to undermine Erdogan's attempt to drag the West, tooth and nail, into putting
its money where its mouth is when it comes to deploring Assadist atrocities ( -
or at the very least, to stop obstructing aid to the rebels). Western commentators hold against Erdogan his
very open anti-PKK campaign, which they disingenuously portray as some dirty
secret.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">There is no
stopping Assad's march of slaughter without giving Turkey freedom to act. The idea that Erdogan is some sort of loose
canon stands in the way of this objective.
Yet it is not Erdogan who has proven an unreliable, indeed treacherous
ally. To appreciate how Turkey has been
maligned, you have to look at its reputation and situation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">The West
has had many decades of treating Turkey with contempt, at least from the time
when, at the outbreak of World War I, the British Royal Navy <a href="http://hubpages.com/education/World-One-War-Turkeys-failed-Dreadnoughts">seized</a>
two battleships constructed for the Ottomans and paid for by donations from the
Turkish public. A <a href="http://warontherocks.com/2016/08/repairing-the-u-s-turkish-alliance/">piece</a>
by Turkey expert Aaron Stein typifies the condescension with which even the
most well-informed analysts view Turkish affairs. It can serve as a point of departure for
exploring what's wrong with current views of the US-Turkish alliance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Here is a
passage that gives the flavor of the piece:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">...the United States worked for months to
assuage Turkish concerns about the military operation to take Manbij from the
Islamic State. The ground force, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), is made up
primarily of the YPG. The YPG, in turn, rely on air support from a variety of
platforms, including drones, A-10s, and allied F-16s based in Turkey. Incirlik
was the hub for the planning of the Manbij operation and, eventually, a meeting
between Arab, U.S., and Turkish officials to reach a final agreement for
the “holding” of the city once ISIL was defeated. The agreement was designed to
assuage Turkish concerns about a heavy Kurdish presence west of the Euphrates,
something that Turkey had warned was a “red-line” in the past and would prompt
military action. Turkey was, without question, difficult to work with during
this time, but it ultimately supported the operation and the American-backed
plan.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">In other
words Turkey was reluctant to back an expansion of SDF power; they were
"without question, difficult to work with". Stop a moment and consider exactly what this
is supposed to mean.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The SDF is
nothing but the YPG ("People's Protection Unit"), a Kurdish militia,
with some Arabs recruited for cosmetic purposes. The YPG is an arm of the PKK ("Kurdistan
Workers' Party"), a fact only the PKK occasionally and feebly denies, also
for cosmetic purposes. The PKK and
Turkey have been at war for decades.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">This is not
a small war. It involves hundreds of
casualties on both side and extensive use for heavy weapons. It is accompanied by terrorist attacks in
which many civilians die. Most recently,
the PKK broke a truce and <a href="http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Three+Turkish+policemen,+child+injured+in+bomb+blast+in+Mardin.-a0434029619">killed</a>
three Turkish policemen. The stated reason for this act wasn't any of Turkey's
attacks on the Kurdish people. It was
because the Islamic State had blown up a gathering of young PKK supporters on
Turkish soil.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Turkey
can't make decisive progress against the PKK because it has sanctuary in
Northern Syria. There the PKK has an
alliance of convenience with the Assad régime, also an enemy of Turkey. The US has adopted the YPG, the PKK's Syrian
affiliate, as a proxy against the Islamic State. The US and its 'coalition' have provided the
PKK with huge quantities of weapons and millions of dollars. They have also provided extensive close air
support for PKK operations. This of
course has strengthened the PKK immeasurably, and emboldened them. Reports <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/us-backed-kurdish-forces-answer-turkish-demand-to-pullback-from-euphrates/2016/08/25/8b05a212-6a9a-11e6-99bf-f0cf3a6449a6_story.html?postshare=6741472118809284&tid=ss_tw">refer
to</a> "the Kurds’ ambitions, which have been fueled by the support they
have received from the U.S military." <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Via its SDF
militia, the PKK has attacked Turkish-backed anti-Assad forces. In so doing it has crossed the Euphrates from
east to west. This is what Turkey termed
a red line, because PKK expansion in that direction promised to give the PKK
control over extensive, crucial stretches of the Syrian-Turkish border. Of course that would facilitate PKK actions
against Turkey immensely. The US agreed
not to let this happen and then did nothing to enforce its agreement.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Because the
geography is so different, it is hard to construct a comparison which helps
decide whether Turkey is being 'difficult'.
But here's a very imperfect attempt.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Suppose Al
Qaeda had established itself in central Canada and conducted intermittently
successful military actions in the American Midwest. It then gained some territory on the New
York-Canada border. The EU, having found
Al Qaeda useful for its own purposes, was pouring arms and money into the AQ
forces using, incredibly, bases in Boston to do so. It gained access to these bases by promising
not to let AQ into New York state. AQ,
however, did deploy in upper New York state, and the EU did nothing about it. Having lost thousands in the fight against
AQ, the US was kinda upset. Did that
make the US a difficult ally?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">The example
is absurd because the story can't get started.
A US government that granted the EU bases for supplying Al Qaeda
operations inside the US wouldn't last for a second. So there's no puzzle about Turkish reaction
to US policy except why it was so mild in the first place. Turkey might quite reasonably have withdrawn
its ambassador to Washington at the first suggestion that 'The Coalition'
should have anything to do with the Kurds.
So here's what's really hard to understand: how analysts and news media can muster enough
obliviousness not to marvel at the abuse to which Turkey is
subjected in virtually all discussions of the US/EU/NATO alliance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US">None of
this is to deny that or discuss whether the PKK, much less the Kurds, had
excellent reason for every single action they ever mounted against Turkey and
Turks. Maybe they did. The issue is whether Turkey was a difficult
ally. That turns not on whether Turkey
acts with moral justification but on whether the US treats Turkey as allies
normally do. The US does nothing of the
sort.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Michael Neumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01558892758943318577noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273076348938263308.post-27083663689225062552016-08-20T22:10:00.001-07:002016-08-20T22:27:30.015-07:00Yes, do compare atrocities!<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">Though it is nothing like the cause of Syria's misery, one culprit has played a major role in its perpetuation. It not only erodes the will of the West to do something. It also actually undermines the international order. That culprit is the human rights discourse that has built up since the end of the Second World War.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">The development of human rights discourse has consistently broadened the world's notion of atrocity to the point where accusations of atrocity simply carry no weight. This began when Raphael Lemkin <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007050" target="_blank">created</a> the term 'genocide' in 1944:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;"> By ‘genocide’ we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group. This new word, coined by the author to denote an old practice in its modern development, is made from the ancient Greek word <i>genos</i> (race, tribe) and the Latin <i>cide</i> (killing)…. Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">Lemkin was inventing a concept. He wanted to transcend immediate circumstance, give his idea the majesty of a wide sweep. So he opened the door to most expansive views. No, he's saying, genocide isn't just killing people. The 'foundations of the life of national groups' is not the same as 'the survival on this earth of the members of those groups'. It almost seems as if you plan to destroy the national identity of some group, even without violence, that's genocide.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">The Geneva Convention against genocide, adopted in 1948, took the potential weakness of the original definition and ran with it. It defined genocide as (*)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">..any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;"> (a) Killing members of the group;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;"> (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 70.9pt; text-indent: -70.9pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;"> (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;"> (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;"> (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.</span></div>
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</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Consider what this means. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 17.12px;">Suppose all the females of a religious sect, even one with the most repugnant practices, were sterilized. The sterilization was imposed because if you didn't submit, you were fined $100. </span><span style="line-height: 107%;"> This comes within the exact definition of genocide. So the sterilization is every bit as much a case of genocide as taking six million people and putting them to death through beatings, starvation, torture, gassing and other means.(**)</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">The framers of the Geneva Convention were probably didn't do this by inadvertence. They are likely to have thought: "so much the better. We want to cast our anti-genocide convention in the most expansive terms. That way, we get to outlaw more bad things than a narrow definition would permit. Hey, why stick with race? Why not add religion? Aren't all attempts to eliminate a religion terrible crimes? Any why stick with killing? Aren't nonviolent means to this end just as bad?"<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">Well that's the problem. No, the sterilization case is not just as bad. When you put what is very questionable in the same category as catastrophic evil, you risk desensitizing people to the difference. And as this practice has flourished over the decades, that's what has happened, and that has exacted a terrible price on Syrians. Indeed since many Syrians have themselves enthusiastically signed on to the expansionist approach to atrocity, they have been duped into complicity with their own neglect.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">The expansion runs rampant through the documents of international organizations. The Fourth Geneva Convention states that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">The Occupying Power shall, with the cooperation of the national and local authorities, facilitate the proper working of all institutions devoted to the care and education of children.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">In the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, violations of privacy, freedom to marry, travel and vote are every bit as much human rights offenses as enslavement and murder. Of course this prevents no one from saying that some of these crimes were of a quite different order than others. But that isn't how it has worked out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">'Human rights violation', like 'war crime', sounds like and is in fact taken for a very serious matter, whether or not it would, but for those labels, count as an atrocity. The categories are invested with immense but largely imaginary authority. They were created in an orgy of half-sincere good wishes. Nations did not intend them to be taken seriously, which is why the documents which enshrine them never came with serious enforcement mechanisms. Yet here we allegedly have a collection of the most heinous crimes conceivable, ratified (literally or figuratively) by the most allegedly august international bodies. All this has created or at least encouraged an almost irresistible tendency not to distinguish among these heinous acts. Aren't they all just terrible? How can we diminish one by deeming it less serious than another?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">The intention underlying this refusal to distinguish is exalted. It is to eliminate all war crimes, human rights violations, and crimes against humanity such as genocide. It is equivalent to a zero tolerance approach to, say, drugs, or speeding. The ambition might be thought noble were its effects not so disastrous. What presents itself as high morality is merely intense and harmful moralizing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">The harm comes from the zero tolerance attitude coupled with the fact that all nations and certainly all parties in all civil wars commit war crimes that violate human rights. Often they even adopt policies that fit the very broad notion of 'genocide' or its close relative, ethnic cleansing. So not only in Syria, but pretty much elsewhere and everywhere, all parties to the conflict are officially reprehensible. According to zero tolerance, the crimes of one are not to be compared to the crimes of the other: that would be forgetting that <i>all</i> violations of human rights etc. are extremely serious.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">Why then is there such surprise that, despite all reports of régime atrocities in Syria, no people of no nation seem able to work up enduring outrage? Report what you like, and soon you will get the reaction inculcated in us for decades: well yes, but doesn't the other side commit terrible crimes? Won't atrocities always be with us until we learn to respect international law? Isn't it suspiciously hysterical to scream about this one offender?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">Policy analysts refashion this into a mantra replete with adolescent wisdom: there are no good guys in Syria. This slides easily into: let's just back whoever we like, however much we like, for our own interests. "Our own interests" means, for US governments, what won't upset the voters. That in turn means no serious commitment in Syria, because that would entail either American deaths and great expense, or arming 'Arabs'. So already the moralizing has important effects on policy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">There is another, equally damaging effect: the almost universally accepted convention that when it comes to atrocity, we don't need to know the details. It's all criminal, isn't it? Why wallow in sadism and cruelty? This is why, for instance, the Caesar archive of photos, widely distributed, has had no impact - and why so many see no reason to view them. They are supposed to force people to confront Syria's realities but the fact is, they don't. They are supposed to present details but the fact is, they do no such thing. We see emaciated corpses, some with injuries. That doesn't tell us how these people died, and zero tolerance tells us: "well, aren't people dying all over in this terrible conflict? Don't people die terrible deaths worldwide? Why then should these pictures tell us anything about what should happen in Syria.? After all, isn't it just a question of backing one bad guy rather than another? After all, why should Americans die to clean up a mess created by a bunch of bad guys running around killing each other? Can we really change the sort of society that generates these crimes? Is it really our job to do so?"<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">The very same people who cannot believe that the world just throws up its hands over Syria belong to those who enable that reaction. They cry out about human rights and war crimes, legitimating ridiculously broad categories that level out all choices into exercises in futility. Human rights discourse sets you up to say, there are no good options. And that indeed is how people react.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">Well, what's wrong with that? Drop the refusal to compare and the problem becomes apparent. The situation in Syria presents far more than a choice between alleged evils. Comparison would show the crucial fact whose neglect affects all the West's reactions and policy decisions about Syria: that Assad represents an evil orders of magnitude greater than what is normally encountered in this world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">Imagine that people did actually examine and compare the record of the various parties to the Syrian conflict. They might find reasons why it is not only morally permissible but morally obligatory, at times, to give full military support to people who commit war crimes and violate human rights. That realization can occur only when people stop saying it's all the same and really look at the details of atrocities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">The worst atrocities are almost never reported. Incredibly, the latest Amnesty International <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/rights-group-17000-killed-syrian-state-jails-41470143" target="_blank">account</a> of torture in Syrian jails specifies the details of only of cases which are mild by Assad's standards. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">Perhaps here again, to report worse is thought merely prurient by an agency known for its 'even-handedness', that is, its refusal to compare.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">But the details say something otherwise impossible to convey: that the Assad régime, even in the face of all the other horrible régimes around the world, introduces a level of barbarism scarcely conceivable. How typical for the world to focus on Assad's bombing, as if this was his worst, as if some fancy American fighter jets could do some flyovers and make all well. There are two reasons this won't do.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">First, the focus won't overcome the refusal to compare: think how many will say, "but doesn't the West bomb civilians too? Didn't the US and Britain do this, deliberately, in the Second World War? Isn't bombing civilians, whether or not it is fully expected 'collateral damage', a terrible thing? What, are we going to compare atrocities now?" Second, the focus on barrel bombs is oblivious to Syria's realities. For Assad, barrel bombs are a mere convenience. Before the barrel bombs, his forces didn't kill children from the sky. They took knives and slit the throats of babies and toddlers. There are photographs and well-confirmed reports of this for anyone who takes the trouble to find them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">The refusal to compare and its consequent avoidance of details conceals uncomfortable facts. ISIS' beheadings that so shock the world take moments; they are humane compared to the slow deaths Assad's torturers have inflicted on victims as young as 11. Bombing hospitals is indeed terrible: before the bombings, régime troops invaded the hospitals on foot and tortured people in their hospital beds. And the tortures of Abu Ghraib are love pats compared to what Assad inflicts on human flesh.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">To these qualitative comparisons must be added quantitative ones. Assad murders and tortures many times more people than any other participant in the conflict. To first preach about the awfulness of atrocities, and then assign no weight to how many human beings suffer them, is nothing short of bizarre.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">It's hardly a surprise that honest comparisons are avoided: the conclusions they compel are so unwelcome. But they loom large because they point to a crossroads of morality and political realism. The fact - it is a fact - is that ISIS, which conducts massacres, beheads people, blows up civilians, executes by burning alive and throws homosexuals off buildings - is, according to all reports on the scale and nature of the atrocities, much less brutal than the Syrian government. That is not a world it is in anyone's interest to legitimate and therefore to perpetuate. Before Assad we already lived with fine declarations masking pathetically low real standards governing how we treat one another. To let Assad remain in power - or his entire régime minus the man himself - is to lower standards even more. The fact that many prefer ISIS' horrible rule to his own is clear evidence what dangers lie in the refusal to compare.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">-----------<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">(*) Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2[3].<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(**) Even less questionable cases fit definition of genocide.</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 17.12px;">Suppose a religious sect is found to mistreat all its children in significant ways. These children are (forcibly) taken away and placed with a similar religious sect which does children no harm.</span></span>Michael Neumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01558892758943318577noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273076348938263308.post-89781476890846254972016-05-05T13:47:00.000-07:002016-05-09T03:51:51.093-07:00Charles Lister's jihad against Jabhat al NusraCharles Lister's recent <i>Foreign Policy</i> <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/05/04/al-qaeda-is-about-to-establish-an-emirate-in-northern-syria/" target="_blank">piece</a> compounds the <a href="http://insufficientrespect.blogspot.ca/2016/02/get-serious-about-removing-assad.html" target="_blank">shoddy thinking</a> behind his previous warnings about Jabhat al Nusra.<br />
<br />
He tells us without evidence that senior Al Qaeda figures 'almost certainly' travelled to Syria to meet with Jabhat al Nusra leaders. Maybe so. He also emphasizes that these senior figures are very close to Al Qaeda leader Al Zawahiri.<br />
<br />
Why, according to Lister, is this so alarming? It's not obvious, because Lister clearly states that Al Zawahiri has taken a moderate direction and isn't interested in mounting attacks on the West. Nor does Lister assert anywhere in his piece that these 'senior figures' will urge Nusra to undertake such attacks. In fact he asserts that the senior figures crossed into Syria because their focus is on, well, Syria. So the presence of senior Al Qaeda figures should, one would think, be reassuring. After all, every recent attack on the West has been carried out by groups <i>not</i> closely linked to Al Qaeda. The attackers have all identified with ISIS, which is hostile to Al Qaeda, to a significant extent because Al Qaeda is too moderate.<br />
<br />
But Lister puts "moderate" in scare quotes. Why is that? Not because Al Qaeda is showing itself bent on attacking the West. Instead we hear that Jabhat al Nusra "has slowly revealed more and more of its extremist face while trying to avoid risking its accepted status within the mainstream opposition." Here Lister indulges in his habitual practice of conflating extremism in social or cultural policy with extremism in anti-Western policy.<br />
<br />
Jabhat al Nusra is arguably extreme in what it expects of women and in its attitude to secular vices - though not much moreso than the Gulf States whom the US feels secure enough to arm, collectively, on a scale exceeding even what's showered on Israel. As US arms policy shows, this 'domestic' extremism, however deplorable, hasn't the slightest tendency of indicate any danger to the West. Hopefully Lister's readers are aware of this transparent bait-and-switch.<br />
<br />
Finally, Lister warns that Jabhat al Nusra intends, down the road, to establish a 'caliphate'. Is this word supposed to frighten us? A caliphate is a kind of authority. That Nusra seeks to establish it, again, hasn't the slightest tendency to indicate aggression towards the West. To seek authority doesn't have some built-in intention to use it to threaten the world, or the West. And, also again, Lister doesn't even claim Nusra is out to threaten the West. In fact he pretty well says the opposite. <br />
<br />
Nusra may be reprehensible in its enforced puritanism, though its enforcement is, again, no more Draconian than what's frequently encountered in the US' Gulf State allies. Nusra also has strong popular support, and little wonder, because it has often provided the most effective resistance against Assad's atrocities. Lister himself <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/putin-assad-isis_us_560d7db0e4b0dd85030b2368" target="_blank">seems to believe</a> that Assad's war on Syrians lies at the heart of the 'jihadis'' rise and therefore of attacks on the West. So Nusra is more plausible as a counter to extremist threats than as the embodiment of it.<br />
<br />
This is not to say that, if the US continues to bomb Nusra and treat it as a major menace, Nusra will never respond. It is to say that the campaign against Nusra is far more likely to create a danger than to avert one.<br />
<br />Michael Neumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01558892758943318577noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273076348938263308.post-2360846205842774422016-03-28T09:13:00.000-07:002016-03-28T09:13:15.280-07:00Really, IS and the Syrian régime are enemiesTwo claims about some purported ISIS-régime alliance refuse to die. One can be disposed of in short order. Yes, too-clever-by-half Syrian intelligence agencies supported various extremist Islamists in 2008-2011 or so. But this is hardly the same as supporting ISIS, which had no independent identity back then. It's not even as damning as, say, Israel's early support of Hamas. No one supposes Israel and Hamas are, therefore, buddies in secret.<br />
<br />
The other claim requires only slightly more attention. With the dogged sophistry of 9-11 conspiracy theorists, some still hold that, if now IS and the Syrian régime do fight one another, this is new. Before, they were in a tacit alliance. They didn't really fight one another. Indeed the régime and IS ganged up on the rebels.<br />
<br />
It's true that the Syrian régime, not being insane, probably did on occasion see in IS attacks on the rebels an opportunity to mount their own assaults. But to take advantage of fighting between your enemies doesn't mean they're not your enemies. The reason for the current régime campaign against ISIS has nothing to do with a change in alignment. It has to do with obvious strategic priorities.<br />
<br />
The régime, all along, has fought its battles where it was most threatened. This meant securing, as much as possible, its coastal enclave (Latakia/Tartous), Damascus, and population centers near Damascus. That's why it made little effort in the extreme South, where the rebels did well, or the remote Northeast, where IS established itself in Raqqa. In the Northwest it lacked the resources to retake Aleppo at a time when that would have meant confronting the US-backed rebels, the Kurds and perhaps Turkey.<br />
<br />
With Russian support, things have changed radically. Homs, once the most important rebel stronghold in the core region, is under régime control. The Western enclave is secure. Even the less important areas are no concern. In the South the rebels' US and Jordanian backers are interested only in diverting anti-Assad militias into anti-IS proxies. US support in the Northwest has come to have much the same objective. What's more, America's (and Russia's) Kurdish allies can be counted on to neutralize the rebels not only in Aleppo, but all along the Turkish border. Russian support also means far fewer casualties for the Lebanese and Iranian-backed Iraqi militias, so that Assad no longer has manpower problems. The one remaining problem area is Idlib, where Jabhat al Nusra refuses any truce with the régime - but there the US-backed rebels know they cannot support a Nusra-initiated offensive without losing their backing. This means that the danger from Idlib is very moderate. Finally Russia is very successfully making problems for Turkey via the Kurds, so that Turkey, and therefore Gulf State powers who supply the rebels through Turkey, are in no position to give the rebels serious support.<br />
<br />
That's why the régime fights IS now, and why it didn't fight IS as much before. It has nothing to do with alliances or cooperation. It's because the major threat to the régime, the rebels, became a very minor threat. The change in strategy occurred as soon as that became clear.<br />
<br />
The insistence in the face of these indisputable facts that IS and the régime have some covert relationship, or some de facto alliance, is disturbing, because it is so clearly false. When the rebels' supporters display delusional behavior, it can hardly help what's left of the rebels' cause.Michael Neumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01558892758943318577noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273076348938263308.post-2407819456857166202016-02-29T01:08:00.000-08:002016-03-01T23:58:50.680-08:00Get serious about removing Assad: disengage from Syria<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
'German idealist' Immanuel Kant could be hard-headed. "Whoever wills the end, wills the
unavoidably necessary means," he said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">There
are many non-Syrians who rant and rave against Assad. They demand that the world 'do something'
about him. They 'support' the rebels, or
some of the rebels. These people
allegedly want Assad gone. But they do
not will the unavoidably necessary means to remove him, so they do not will the
alleged end. Their ranting expresses
mere dislike, not serious intention.
Since they will not so much as advocate what it takes to end the
catastrophe, even their dislike can't run so terribly deep.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">What it
takes to end Assad's catastrophe is support for all the rebels, including some
radical, anti-democratic Islamists who have pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda's
leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. It takes
willingness, directly or indirectly, to supply these extremists. Try, if you like, to find one single
commentator who doesn't espouse some sort of falsehood or sophistry to avoid
this conclusion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The main
maneuver is to claim that there is a secularist democratically-minded rebel
force, usually called the Free Syrian Army, sufficient to defeat Assad. Sometimes it is said, approvingly, that this
force is 'vetted' by the CIA. With more
backing, some say, this force is also the best bet against ISIS, far better
than Assad. Or, even if they're not the
best bet in the short run, they're the best bet in the long run: even if Assad might do as well as a weapon
against the immediate threat of ISIS, only the FSA could provide a long-term,
solid counter to ISIS - by eliminating the Assadist tyranny that spawned ISIS
in the first place.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">None of
this is right - it's false, misleading or incapable of making its case.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">There
are incorruptible secularist democratically-minded forces, but they are small;
on their own they couldn't even hold their own.
In the South, where they are strongest and most independent of Islamist
influence, big things have been promised for years. The promises faded and now, with Russian
assistance to the régime, they have vanished.
In the North, also for years, the FSA has needed help from and alliance
with radical Islamists. Fear of these
Islamists is why the US is so squeamish about supplying arms, in North and
South alike. Now, with Russian-backed
attacks from the régime and the Kurds, no one seriously suggests that the FSA
is going to overthrow Assad.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">But
suppose, somehow, the FSA were generously reinforced and redirected against IS
- presumably in exchange for some sort of shameful deal with the régime. Would they be the best military answer to
ISIS in Syria? This would be as much as
to say that a heavily reinforced Syrian army, backed by Russian close air support,
Iranian regulars and Shia militias, would not do as well. There isn't the slightest reason to suppose
this. What's more, it's not even clear
that Iran, Russia, the Kurds and Assad won't put an end to ISIS on their own. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">But what
about the long term? Wouldn't the FSA
offer a better solution than the régime, whose oppression spawned the extreme
Islamists in the first place? In the
long term there is little reason to suppose so.
Assad's oppression was far from the only factor that spawned extremist
Islam, which took root and flourished much earlier. The West's gratuitous assault on Iraq,
following decades of foolish
interventions in the Middle East, had much to do with it. The FSA can't undo these injuries, and it
will not easily shake its association with the Americans held responsible for
them . Nor do the programs of the FSA
testify to the slightest interest in addressing the poverty and inequality that
are probably the deepest causes of the Islamist surge. Instead FSA & its supporters issue <a href="http://www.etilaf.us/fsa_southern_front">declarations</a> that <a href="https://notgeorgesabra.wordpress.com/2014/10/18/ypg-and-fsa-united-against-terrorism-and-for-a-free-democratic-syria/">voice
commitments</a> to <a href="https://notgeorgesabra.wordpress.com/2015/04/07/the-syrian-freedom-charter/">liberal
and democratic values</a>. They are sometimes
mildly welfarist but offer no economic or social transformation likely to
interest poorer Syrians. So the idea
that the FSA, as opposed to Assad, offers some lasting solution to the problem
of extremist Islam is implausible.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
military and political shortcomings of the FSA begin to make the case for
un-vetted support for the rebels, including the extreme Islamists. Contrary to received opinion, it is a
strategy which holds very little risk to the West, very little cost, and some
benefit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Vetting<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Consider
the whole idea of vetting Syrian fighters, as pure a product of American
insularity and ignorance as you're likely to find. For one thing, anyone born and raised under a
brutal police state has learned to conceal his opinions and leanings from much
tougher and wilier intelligence authorities than a CIA officer. For another, the vetting project flies in the
face of Syrian realities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Vetting
has never been wonderfully effective.
The latest notable failure in the region became apparent when "a
Jordanian physician named <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol.-55-no.-3/the-triple-agent-the-al-qaeda-mole-who-infiltrated-the-cia.html">Humam
Khalil al-Balawi</a>" blew up seven CIA officers at a meeting in
Afghanistan. I knew someone who vetted
French resistance fighters for the OSS and considered the whole exercise a
joke. But Syria is far, far less favorable terrain
for vetting than Nazi-occupied France. It is far, far less favorable terrain than
contemporary Middle Eastern countries that have experienced unrest such as
Algeria or Egypt.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In
wartime France there were maybe two or three factions to which you could
belong. In Egypt or Algeria, there have
been two or three radical Islamist factions, and it doesn't even matter too
much which one has your allegiance. In
Syria there are literally hundreds of opposition groups, many of them
ephemeral. Not only do these groups have
very different orientations; the groups themselves quite often change their
orientation. Even CIA-vetted groups have
done this. So vetting can easily be
invalidated both at the group and at the individual level.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It's not
just that these opportunities for 'deviance' exist: it's also that constantly changing
circumstances provide powerful motives to deviate. Groups may change for ideological
reasons: they are disillusioned with the
Islamist or secularist movements, or they come to adopt the agenda of some
external supporter. Individuals may
change for these reasons too, but also for many non-ideological reasons. They find that another group has come to be
far more effective against Assad, or they become disgusted with the tactics of
their own group, or they come to consider their current leaders corrupt, or
they are attracted by the salaries of some other group, or they find that their
own group simply isn't militarily viable any more. Finally and perhaps most important, vetted
groups may and frequently do find alliance with un-vetted groups a pressing
strategic necessity. So even if vetting
produced correct conclusions today, those conclusions quite frequently don't
hold tomorrow. The plethora of options
afforded to groups and individuals in Syria is likely unique and completely
undermines the vetting project.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">This
makes me impatient with analysts' and commentators' suggestion that such-and-such
group or individual might not be really sincere in their professed commitment
to this or that Western Value. Of course
they might not be; what adult isn't aware that you can't really see into
others' hearts? Syria analysts seem to live
in a world of rebel statements and organizational charts which they treat like
a window on reality. Better not to take
the statements and charts too seriously in the first place, and look instead at
actions and the immediate pressures of circumstances. When you do this, it's immediately clear that
in Syria, individuals frequently and radically change their minds. Rather than fuss about depth of commitment,
policy makers should think about how to give people reason to commit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Risks<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Since
rebel groups and individuals cannot be effectively vetted, they can be
supported only un-vetted. This is the
only real alternative, largely because once the US starts vetting, its hysteria
about al Qaeda deters it from delivering even minimally adequate support, even to
those it distrusts least. But isn't
unvetted support terribly risky, particularly in the case of 'al-Qaeda
affiliated' Jabhat al Nusra? The short
answer is no, if by 'risky' is meant increasing the risk of attacks on the
West. Only the same sort of bad analysis
that underlies vetting can make it seem otherwise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">From the
West's point of view, the main risk posed by Nusra lies in the threat of
attacks on the West. (The West has
certainly shown it is not overly concerned about attacks on Syrians.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">To be
clear from the start, there is absolutely no doubt that Jabhat al Nusra does
indeed pose a terror threat to the US.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Immigrants
and indeed visitors to the US also pose a clear and documented terror threat. Of course there are some other threats. Hezbollah is a threat. Unlike Jabhat al Nusra, it has actually
carried out a truly massive terror attack against US troops. So Assad, Hezbollah's close ally, is also a
threat. The Druze, since many are allies
of Assad and therefore of Hezbollah, also pose a threat. So do many Syrian Christian groups, for the
same reason. Saudi Arabia, the Gulf
States and Turkey, all linked to groups linked to Jabhat al Nusra, must pose a
threat as well. Arguably the US poses a
terror threat to itself, because it trains soldiers knowing some will go nuts
and kill people at random.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In
other words, it is not enough just to
say something is a threat. You need to
know the scale and nature of the threat.
Even more important and usually ignored, you need to know whether the
existence of the threat actually increases the risk of an attack on the West. We'll see that the answer isn't obvious.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
scale and exact nature of Nusra's threat to the US is, of course, unknown. We can only look at the evidence that Nusra
plans to attack the US, or is likely to do so in the future. That evidence hardly exists.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
principal ground for seeing Nusra as a threat is that it is 'affiliated' with
Al Qaeda. That at least is actually
confirmed by official Nusra statements. What
does it mean?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In the
first, place, affiliation with Al Qaeda does not mean subordination to the Al
Qaeda leadership. Al Qaeda's leader,
Ayman al-Zawahiri, does give orders or at least exhort affiliates to do or not
to do certain things. Whether they pay
attention is an entirely different matter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Al Qaeda
is now frequently characterized as a brand - in the loose sense of some set of
names and symbols un-enforced by some sort of intellectual property
police. As Richard Reeve, terrorism
analyst at the UK based Oxford Research Group, puts it: "Brand franchising is essentially what
the AQ 'central' leadership now does..."
And according to Myriam Benraad, policy fellow on the European Council
on Foreign Relations, the al Qaeda affiliation no longer has the impact it was
designed to have. "What we see...
very clearly is the fracturing of what is called al Qaeda, which has more or
less become a <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/al-qaeda-infighting-complicates-convoluted-syrian-crisis/a-17410561">brand</a>."
Yet this characterization of Al Qaeda's
relation to its 'affiliates' does not begin to provide an assessment of the
strength of such links. To assess that,
you have to look at the affiliates themselves.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Matters
may be very different in North Africa, but in the case of Jabhat al Nusra, what
the leadership maintains is not, for the membership, written in stone. As we've seen, people join Nusra for all
sorts of non-ideological reasons. What
they have in common is a desire to fight Assad, not some Al Qaeda dogma. So it is not as if Nusra provides hordes
ready to do anything the leadership says.
The idea of its rank and file suddenly devoting themselves to attacking
the West is a non-starter. And since the
leadership depends on its rank-and-file, there is a definite limit to its
capacity to turn anti-Western sentiments into anti-Western plans of action.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Evidence<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">But
aren't there some serious anti-Western terrorist operatives within Nusra? The chief proponent of this claim is Charles
Lister, who tells us that Nusra is a <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/al-qaeda-khorasan-syria-bigger-threat-to-us-than-isis/">bigger
threat</a> than ISIS. Why does he say
this? What follows does not review all
his case, but portions representative, I think, of its character.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
overwhelming bulk of Lister's evidence for his contentions comes under the
rubric of: some people said some
words. It should be obvious that
anywhere, but especially where the Syrian conflict is concerned, this has
little weight. But Lister's claims get
credibility because, in part, they conform to facts on the ground. For the
hostility of Jabhat al Nusra to Western ideals, it is not just a matter of
their statements; it is apparent from,
for example, their regulations about women and their modes of governance. But for the claim that Jabhat al Nusra is a
threat to the West, there isn't one single fact on the ground to support, let
alone confirm it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Lister
notes that Jabhat al Nusra has bomb experts and that it has planted bombs in
Syria and Lebanon. Yes, it is fighting a
war in Syria and like other groups this leads to occasional conflict with
Lebanese government forces. In this
conflict, everyone uses bombs: that
hasn't the slightest tendency to suggest that any of these parties will use
bombs in the West. Indeed it undermines
Lister's identification of the presence
of Al Qaeda bomb experts in their ranks.
Given that Jabhat al Nusra actually does use bombs in Syria and Lebanon,
and nowhere else, might not they need bomb experts for this purpose, and not
for attacks on the West? Certainly it is
possible that Jabhat al Nusra will in some distant future blow up a shopping
mall in Kansas; it is also possible that the US will invade Canada. These possibilities become serious worries if
and only if there is something more than the presence of individuals who
theoretically could help make these possibilities a reality.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Well,
then, is there some reason to suppose that these individuals have ever planned
an attack on the West? No. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
basis for claiming otherwise is laughably thin.
Lister tells us that "The first public recognition of this came in
early July 2014, when security at airports with direct service to the United
States was tightened due to “credible threats.”For one thing, this is not only
the first but also the only 'evidence' that the Khorasan group - alleged
super-terrorists whose members Lister has laboriously documented as belonging
to Nusra's core membership - planned an attack on the US. But this is no evidence at all; it is a claim
that there is evidence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">What
then is the actual content of that claim?
Lister points to an <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2014/08/18/opinion/bergen-does-isis-pose-threat-to-us/">article</a>
which has some US-based fans of Nusra doing exactly nothing, plus a government
warning about the July 4th weekend. The warning, however, stated that "At
the moment, U.S. officials say there is no specific, credible threat to the
homeland." Here is an <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2015/07/02/opinions/sexton-july-4th-threat/">evaluation</a>
of such warnings from Buck Sexton, a former CIA intelligence officer who was
assigned to their Iraq and Afghanistan offices and later joined the NYPD
intelligence division. He is now a TV
commentator, loud and aggressive about terrorism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-line-height-alt: 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-line-height-alt: 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The overall odds are low that a major terrorist
attack will be attempted over the July Fourth weekend. Authorities say there is
"no specific, credible threat," which is bureaucrat-speak for
"we don't really know" and is a strong indicator that our intensified
counterterrorism posture is based more on gut instinct than actionable
intelligence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">As for
reports from Syria itself, they seem more like hints than evidence. Consider the basis for the US threat
assessment regarding the Khorasan Group.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
assessment's character is <a href="https://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/from-khorasan-to-the-levant-a-profile-of-sanafi-al-nasr">suggested</a>
in Kevin Jackson's "From Khorasan to the Levant: A Profile of Sanafi
al-Nasr", posted by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. Jackson, <a href="http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2016/01/27-the-islamic-state-challenges-alqaida-lister/en-jihadi-rivalry.pdf">says
Lister</a>, is one of those "experts whose consistent excellence in researching
and analysing international terrorism has influenced my work." Jackson states that <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-line-height-alt: 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-line-height-alt: 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">[al-Nasr's] writings reflect a deep-seated
animus toward the United States that has both ideological and personal
components. In the years after 9/11 one of his brothers was killed and two of
his brothers were imprisoned by the United States. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Allegedly
in 2007 he went to the Afghanistan-Pakistan tribal areas, where he allegedly
befriended Al Qaeda leaders. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">What did
he do there? Oh, as far as anyone knows,
mainly media stuff:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-line-height-alt: 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-line-height-alt: 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">There is little documentation of al-Nasr’s
engagement in al-Qa`ida’s military efforts. He is said to have featured in an
al-Sahab production showing rocket attacks in Paktika, a province in
southeastern Afghanistan.[26] Al-Nasr also provided a vivid account of a
multi-pronged attack he had been charged with filming in 2007.[27] This
supports other sources in which he was characterized as one of the “media men
of Qa`idat al-Jihad in Khorasan” by a fellow member of the organization.[n]
Al-Nasr’s only other appearance in al-Qa`ida’s official media was his later
article for the group’s magazine Tala`i’ Khorasan in which he addressed the
issue of Saudi women in custody.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">To
shorten the tale, he then went to Iran for a while, did media and supposedly
financing, was arrested, released, and did some more media stuff. Later he went to Syria, and in Jabhat al
Nusra engaged in combat, against Assad of course.(*) He was involved in Nusra internal politics. There is no reason to doubt his importance in
the organization (before his reported death).
But Jackson tell us "It is unclear if al-Nasr had any operational
role in the alleged plotting of international attacks by the Khorasan
Group." <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">If I may
translate: there is not the slightest,
tiniest scrap of evidence that he ever had such a role or that any such attacks
were planned. All Jackson can muster is
the observation that, <i>in the case</i> of
any such attacks, it is <i>most likely</i>
that he was involved, because he had "close working relationship with
al-Fadhli, who headed external operations for al-Qa`ida Central in Syria." Jackson offers no reason to suppose there was
any such "case", and admits that Jabhat al Nusra doesn't seem to be
planning any such attacks, but well...
you know... Jabhat al Nusra did use bombs in Lebanon during fighting
there.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">So this
is a mostly media guy who really doesn't like the US and has fought Assad a
bit. There is no evidence, specific or
general, of any planning whatever of any attacks against the US. This is not like the level of intelligence
available to the US before 9/11, and ignored.
It is like the level of intelligence that would justify Russia acting on
'reports' that the US was about to strike Russia. After all, some high-ranking US military guys
and influential congressmen no doubt know some guys who hate the Russians and
talk a lot about nuking them. And
typical of these analyses, we get extensive, minute detail about individuals
who, for all anyone knows, are up to approximately nothing, followed by stern
conclusions about the menace of the organizations to which they belong.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">What
about something more like hard evidence?
Well, not a single Nusra sleeper cell has been identified. No one even states that such cells exist in
the West. Western police forces have
discovered no Nusra-linked documents or arms caches or laptops or cell phones. So the entire case for the Nusra threat is
based on what are essentially mutterings about some members of the group, or
some statements someone associated with the group has at some time made. That's enough, I suppose, to say a threat
exists, because for all we know Nusra might attack the West tomorrow morning. But threats based on such evidence are not
rational grounds for policy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The terror threat<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">However,
absence of evidence is far from the main reason support for Nusra should not be considered risky. The main reason is that the obsession with
this or that potentially terrorist group is futile. The terrorist threat will not change in any
substantial way because this or that group is strengthened or weakened.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Most
groups affiliated with Al Qaeda have little or nothing to do with terrorist
attacks on the West. They are almost
invariably opposing local governments and use terrorist tactics because they
cannot achieve much through conventional warfare. ISIS itself has that origin. Oddly enough, any slight shift they exhibit
to attacks on the West occur after the West has sent planes and weapons to kill
and mutilate as many of them as possible.
What's more, in any particular area, the suppression of one group actually
causes another to emerge. Now there are
anti-Western terrorist or potentially terrorist groups in at least Somalia,
Algeria, Mali, Cameroon, Nigeria, Kenya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan,
the Philippines, Indonesia, Yemen, Lebanon, Palestine, Tunisia, Libya, and
Egypt. Anti-Western terrorists move
among almost all these countries with ease. They have “a huge reservoir of sympathizers who all have western or European passports and who were born or raised” <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/01/refugees-isis-nato-commander-terrorists" target="_blank">in the West</a>. The idea that eliminating the very slight terrorist threat posed by
Nusra will make a noticeable difference is absurd. Eliminate Nusra, and it will strengthen IS in
Syria by quite a lot, as well as most certainly fostering another Syrian al
Qaeda branch, most likely more anti-Western than Nusra ever was. So Nusra's existence makes does not increase
the <i>overall</i> terrorist threat to the
West one bit. So it does not, after all,
increase risk to the West if Nusra gets its hands on Western arms. The claim that you can substantially reduce
the terror threat only by addressing deeper causes such as invasion, poverty,
inequality and oppression may amount to useless preaching: no, these woes will
not be eliminated. That doesn't change
its truth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Suppose
then that the West and particularly the US doesn't care about what happens to
Syrians and doesn't care that much - since Obama wants to 'disengage' from the
region - about what happens in the Middle East.
What the West does care about are attacks on Western soil. We've seen that backing Nusra doesn't
appreciably increase the risks, because deep injustices assure that the threat
will remain robust and widespread. So
the terror threat can be reduced only by addressing these deeper causes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Disengagement<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
problem is that the West can do nothing positive to remedy these injustices:
its destructive incompetence at the silly project of 'nation-building'
is almost universally acknowledged. But
the West can do something negative that will help: it can remove itself as an obstacle to any
remedies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">If the
West cannot improve conditions in Middle Eastern nations, the best it can do
abroad to ward off terror attacks is to remove the grievances that help spawn
them. Un-vetted backing of the rebels
can help the West and especially the US achieve what may seem like incompatible
goals: reducing the threat of terror
attacks and disengaging from the region.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> The key to seeing how this works is to note
that, apart from anti-IS campaigns, the only essential function performed by
the US in Syria is to obstruct regional powers from aiding the rebels. The futile vetting project is complemented by
a far-from-futile project to stop the regional
powers from supplying whom they please with what they please. To achieve the 'activist' goal of removing
Assad - and incidentally to curb both
Russian and Iranian influence - the US doesn't have to do anything. It simply has to <i>not</i> do something, to remove the constraints on the Gulf States and
Turkey. The massive aid they can and
should provide wouldn't even need to come from the US; both nations have ample
stocks of arms. That the US would very
likely be the main replenisher of these stocks is hardly the sort of risk that
wannabe policy wonks invoke when they speak of quagmires or 'boots on the
ground'. So massive support for the
rebels isn't just compatible with disengagement; it <i>is</i> disengagement.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Might
this disengagement also reduce the risk of terror attacks - always assuming
that Syria generates appreciable risk in the first place? Here's the correct answer: no one knows.
But that is also the correct answer to the same question about current
US policies, including the campaign against ISIS. That said, there is reason to suppose that
any such risk would be reduced.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">If the
deeper roots of terrorism are beyond the reach of Western efforts, the same
doesn't seem to hold for the reasons terrorists attack the West. The main grievances against the West are said
to be that its forces occupy the region and it supports repressive secularist
régimes. In Syria, despite US evasions,
this is certainly the case: the US has
explicitly said it prefers the régime to an Islamist takeover. Well, disengagement from Syria is at least a
small step away from the status of an occupying power in the region. It is a large step away from supporting
repressive secularist régimes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Looking
at the longer term, US disengagement in support of the rebels and against Assad
seems to go quite far towards neutralizing extremist resentment of the West. Recent experience throughout much of the
region suggests that, absent brutal repression, the future of Syria and other
states is Islamist. This cannot be
stopped; it can only be delayed by shedding oceans of blood. For the US quite clearly to indicate that it
prefers even a radical Islamic presence in the region to atrocious secularist
régimes addresses fundamentalist grievances pretty directly. If indeed foreign policy can do anything to
reduce the threat of terrorist attacks, this would seem the most promising
direction it could take.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">There
are other advantages to the sort of
disengagement that gives regional powers a free hand against Assad. Middle Eastern people, like people
everywhere, are selective in their moral outrage - but no less serious about it
for all that. Just as, say, many
Americans care deeply about police murders of black people, but don't give a
shit how many Syrians die in agony, so Middle Eastern people are genuinely
outraged that the West is indifferent to atrocities in Syria, where more
innocents can die in a day than are murdered by US police in a year. So at some primitive level, morality and
Western self-interest converge. Terrorists,
we often hear, are at least in part motivated by a well-founded sense of
justice that, it seems, is baffling to many Westerners. Perhaps if these terrorists were humoured by
genuine, consequential Western opposition to Assad's off-the-charts atrocities,
the West would be hated a little less.
This too might undermine anti-Western agendas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Finally,
disengagement would improve US and Western credibility. Given all the fine words uttered against
Assad, it would be a bit less confidence-destroying if the West actually
allowed him to be removed, rather than fussing about the Values of those
involved in removing him. Syrians are
probably not impressed by world powers that tut-tut about Nusra's democratic
credentials but apparently accept the democratic credentials of a man who
killed over 100,000 dissidents to stand for election. This is, indeed,
speculation. But again, so are any
claims about the virtues of current US policy, assuming always there is one. In any case, with Russia's entry into the
conflict, those claims have relapsed into silence. (*)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">How,
then, does all this bear on the panic about Jabhat al Nusra's Al Qaeda
affiliation? Many in the group are not
fanatics; they joined to fight Assad or even for a salary to feed their families. None, so far as any hard evidence suggests,
have joined to attack the West: that
would be a very odd way to go about such a project. The leadership may possibly be a different
story, but the leadership must depend to some extent on its membership, and
it's hard to believe its membership would want to attack Western nations that,
finally, had make removal of Assad possible.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And even
the leadership are people. People change
their minds, their loyalties and their strategies. It used to be considered naïve to suppose
your alliances had to be with those who like you and share your moral outlook. Perhaps that attitude is worth
revisiting. At this moment Hezbollah is
an essential ally of Bashar al Assad despite the fact that its militants were slaughtered
by his father Hafez. And the US is in a
de facto anti-ISIS alliance with Shia militias who killed American soldiers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">----------------------------------<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">(*) Jackson's references to al-Nasr's alleged
combat role simply name interviews with Charles Lister and Aimen Dean, so one
has to guess how they provided confirmation. Aimen Dean is a defector from Al Qaeda turned
MI5 spy. However I have found no
indication that Dean ever set foot in Syria, much less Latakia or Idlib.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">(**)
Backing rebels who may well come to be dominated by extreme Islamists does pose
one very real risk, to Syria's minorities.
On this score there is reason for optimism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The West
and especially the US loves to defend minorities against Arab Muslims. This is because while involvement in Syria
generally goes over poorly with the voters, who couldn't care less about Muslim
Syrians, that same electorate is always in favor of defending someone, anyone,
against them. So here there is no <i>political risk</i> to the US president,
which is all that really concerns him.
So non-Muslim minorities will very likely get Western protection if they
need it, and, since Russia tends to favor these same minorities, probably under
UN auspices. As for the Shia, Iran and
Hezbollah can and almost certainly will protect them. So even assuming ill will and fanaticism
among the rebels, any threat they pose to minorities will very likely be
addressed.</span></div>
Michael Neumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01558892758943318577noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273076348938263308.post-73029321635901986692016-02-10T04:18:00.001-08:002016-02-10T11:03:45.745-08:00Too late for a no-fly zoneMichael Ignatieff and Leon Wieseltier, in a passionately moralistic <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-era-of-us-abdication-on-syria-must-end/2016/02/09/55226716-ce96-11e5-88cd-753e80cd29ad_story.html?postshare=6671455061303342&tid=ss_tw" target="_blank"><i>Washington Post</i> piece</a>, have revived interest in the idea of a no-fly zone in Syria. This proposal, once attractive, has become preposterous.<br />
<br />
Even before Russian intervention, the no-fly zone idea was dubious, if only because the Syrian army possesses many long-range weapons which would cover the entire zone from the ground. But when only the Syrian air force was in question, it was certainly possible, both militarily and politically, to establish such a zone. Today, the strategy is a non-starter.<br />
<br />
A no-fly zone would have to be established either with or without Russian cooperation. If with, it would be nothing but an oblique agreement to bomb IS. Russia would certainly carry on much like today - it would insist on its right to bomb 'extremists', that is, whoever it liked. So Russian-supported no-fly zone would not deserve the name.<br />
<br />
Suppose then, as Ignatieff and Wieseltier imagine, it would be established in defiance of Russia. It would then come with a commitment to shoot down Russian air assets. The US would foresee sustaining some losses from advanced Russian anti-aircraft installations, and would therefore want preemptively to bomb these installations. In other words there would be a great deal of flying in this no-fly zone. After all, a simple Russian capitulation would be utterly disastrous for Putin and indeed for Russian prestige.<br />
<br />
These are the military likelihoods. What matters even more are the real military possibilities. It is one thing to talk of a no-fly zone imposed on the Syrian air force, which Israel proved a pushover decades ago. It is quite something else to initiate violent confrontation with the world's second nuclear power. Even supposing this step could not possibly lead to nuclear Armageddon, nuclear powers have less disincentive to engage in serious conventional warfare: they feel that their opponents will never dare push them to desperate measures. Despite the apparent US lead in high-tech weaponry, it is by no means clear that the US would do well in a ground conflict against a formidable enemy thousands of miles from its shores.<br />
<br />
These military uncertainties make the idea of a no-fly zone politically absurd. Europe would never even consider consenting to such measures - and whatever the true importance of Europe to US interests, America would never risk offending Europe on such a serious matter. Perhaps more important, China would have to take clashes with Russia as proof positive that preparation for a full military confrontation with the US was a pressing necessity.<br />
<br />
Yet this obstacle is as nothing compared to the domestic political barrier. The American people couldn't care less about Syrians. They could never be sold on the measure as a wise step against terrorism, because they are convinced that the Syrian opposition is in bed with terrorists. They could never accept making enemies of Russia and Assad, who fight the Islamic State as well as rebel units that allegedly pro-rebel commentators insist on calling 'Al Qaeda'. There isn't the slightest, tiniest chance that establishing a no-fly zone against Russia could get Congressional approval. A country that wouldn't aid the rebels when the cost was almost zero is hardly going to aid them when the cost is potentially astronomical.<br />
<br />
Is it really possible that Ignatieff and Wieseltier don't realize this? Perhaps their screed is just empty posturing. If not, it suggests something very different from its apparent humanitarianism.<br />
<br />
The presupposition of their no-fly proposal is that the US must take the Syrian conflict in hand rather than entrust it to regional powers. Better clean-shaven American Top Guns at 30,000 feet than a bunch of crazy Arabs running around with Kalashnikovs on the ground. This is amusingly obtuse given that the Russian's Ukrainian adventure has just given the world an excellent lesson in how to intervene 'asymmetrically', without provoking a serious great power confrontation. The US could turn this strategy against Russia through massive, whole-hearted support of local anti-Assad ground forces via the states who back them. Indeed this is the only possible way to end the war that so appalls Ignatieff and Wieseltier. But most likely their contempt for the people of the region blinds them to this opportunity.<br />
<br />Michael Neumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01558892758943318577noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273076348938263308.post-18968768211104132462016-02-07T02:41:00.001-08:002016-02-07T03:10:06.849-08:00US-backed Kurds coordinate with Russia, Assad to attack rebelsOn February 6th, 2016, a Washington Institute for Near East Policy <a href="http://washin.st/20Bo3aj" target="_blank">piece</a> brought into full light an aspect of the Syria conflict long shrouded in willed obscurity. Kurdish units - US armed, trained and financed - attacked FSA positions in Western Aleppo. The attackers were aided by Russian bombs and a simultaneous attack by the SAA, Assad's army.<br />
<br />
Some details and implications:<br />
<br />
The attacking units apparently belong to the all-Kurdish YPG (People's Protection Units) and the SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces), a mostly Kurdish militia with a sprinkling of Arab recruits. The SDF is simply an unofficial asset of the PYD ( Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party), a Syrian Kurdish party fighting and holding territory in Northern Syria. The PYD and its YPG units are to all intents and purposes an arm of the Turkish PKK, one of the two main Kurdish insurgent groups in Iraq, Syria and Turkey itself.<br />
<br />
The PYD has for over a year been a major recipient of US military support, including close air support, most notably in Kobane. Its territory is centered in Hassakeh province. It has had minor turf disputes with Assad, diligently inflated by pro-Kurdish propagandists. It has also clashed the Syrian rebels, including the FSA. More important, it has had at the very least a long-standing modus vivendi with the régime. More recently, collaboration with Assad through his Baath party has almost <a href="https://yallasouriya.wordpress.com/2016/02/06/syria-baath-regional-secretary-visited-al-hassakeh/" target="_blank">come out into the open</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
LCC [a rebel information agency] was informed that Hilal al-Hilal, Assistant Regional Secretary in Baath Party, visited Hasaka city (northeast of Syria) in Feb 02 and met with Kurdish Units accompanied by party leaders and security personnel of the regime in the city. LCC sources said that the attendees discussed coordination between both sides on city administration. Al-Hilal promised the Kurdish Units in the meeting with ammos and weapons support to fight against ISIS in the southern suburbs. The source mentioned also that regime’s forces is about to form a new military troop of “Volunteer Brigades”, and supervised by Hezbollah to support the Kurdish Units in their war with ISIS.</blockquote>
Like every announcement of Western support for the PYD, this report portrays régime-Kurdish collaboration as part of the fight against ISIS. However Hezbollah is, of course, a Iranian-backed militia that has been the most prominent among Assad's non-Syrian support troops. It virtually never fights ISIS but only the rebels.<br />
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From these reports it follows that the US is now underwriting a Kurdish movement which attacks, not only ISIS, but the rebels. In particular it is now part of a major joint assault on crucial positions of the FSA (Free Syrian Army), the very group the US purports to support. This assault is backed by Russian air strikes and complemented by simultaneous régime attacks. The Kurdish attackers belong to an extension of the very same organizations whose main support, up to now, has been the United States. Wherever Obama renders these organizations stronger, including all advances against ISIS, he frees up resources for attacks on the FSA. He does so, not in a small way, but to a crucial extent. So while the US condemns Assad and Russia, at the same time it backs attacks on the opposition to the régime - not just any part of the opposition, but the part which the US has 'vetted' as free from extremist leanings.<br />
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This is not entirely surprising. It has long been clear that, at the end of the day, the US prefers the atrocious reality of Assad to the possibility that a rebel group, any rebel group, comes to power. That's because the US doesn't trust even 'vetted' rebel groups to remain free of Islamist taint.<br />
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Perhaps more surprising is the curtain of silence drawn across the scene by almost every source of information allegedly disgusted with Assad and sympathetic to at least some of the rebels. Even genuine experts on the situation don't say plainly that the Kurds are attacking the FSA with régime and Russian support. On the contrary they express themselves <a href="http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/turkey-s-problems-in-aleppo#.VrYSsGX2G1k.twitter" target="_blank">so obliquely</a> the average reader could never know what's going on:<br />
<blockquote>
YPG forces in Efrin appear to be receiving Russian air support, particularly near Azaz, a key city currently occupied by elements of the Turkish-backed anti-Assad insurgency. Open source airstrike data suggests that the SDF could seize Manbij with US backing, while the Assad regime moves north from Aleppo to Al Bab. The YPG, in turn, could then cut a deal with the regime to travel through regime held territory to Efrin.</blockquote>
Thus the FSA becomes 'elements of the Turkish-backed anti-Assad insurgency', which could mean extremists. There is not even a clear mention of any Kurdish offensive - just the support they 'appear' to be receiving which 'could' enable them to seize some locations. But passages like this, buried in peripheral information sites, are a model of forthrightness compared to what appears, or rather doesn't appear, elsewhere. No major newspaper speaks of the Kurdish offensive - surely one of the biggest developments in the entire five-year conflict. None of the prominent supposedly anti-Assad analysts mention it. Expert military observers who seem to know the movements of every tank in Syria say nothing. Almost invariably, Kurdish attacks on the rebels are studiously ignored in favour of imprecations against Russia and Assad.<br />
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We seem to be in a media climate that mimics the McCarthy or Stalin eras.Michael Neumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01558892758943318577noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5273076348938263308.post-41397687162681841782016-01-24T09:25:00.000-08:002016-01-24T09:25:18.914-08:00Egypt's Arab winterThe <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/23/arab-spring-five-years-on-writers-look-back" target="_blank">reflections</a> on January 25th, the date of Egypt's failed revolution, are painful to read. Far more painful the experience of those now entombed in the military's prisons. Alaa, in a truly heart-rending piece, decides he has nothing more to say. Few even try to be hopeful.<br />
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Perhaps one reason the situation today seems so utterly hopeless is that none of the commentators show any sign of having learned the one sure lesson of Egypt's 'Arab Spring'. This is not at all for lack of insight. It is because that insight itself is, for the secularist revolutionaries who write now, painful indeed.<br />
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I do not claim to know if Egypt's revolution could have succeeded. I do know what, I am quite sure, every Egyptian knows. There can be no real change in Egypt unless the army is defeated. That may be impossible, but it is certainly impossible unless secularists are fully committed to supporting the main opposition in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood.<br />
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Secularists deceived themselves when they could not make this hard choice. They pretended there were other choices. They can pretend no more. The record of secularism in the Middle East, thanks in part to Western interference, has been abysmal. Even today, bloodstained, stagnant Egypt is not the worst of the secularist bunch; it is probably among the best.<br />
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Lebanon and Algeria had civil wars in which over a 100,000 died. Libya is in chaos. Syria and Iraq experience catastrophic slaughter. Jordan may have killed as many Palestinians as any other nation before abandoning its West Bank to Israel's tender mercies. It retains some measure of stability largely due to its smug and total subservience to the US. It is always ready to connive with Israel, itself a disgrace to decency and 'democracy'. Then there are the despairing societies of Morocco and Tunisia. Those who still champion a secularist alternative are following their heart or their faith, but not the evidence.<br />
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Secularism may be the best solution everywhere, but nowhere do the populations of the Middle East have good reason to believe it - and they don't. Change, if it comes, will be Islamist. Those who don't accept this, might as well join the forces of repression.Michael Neumannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01558892758943318577noreply@blogger.com0