Sinekein wrote:stuff about Middle East
I'm debating the merit of even continuing with this because frankly it's a much less intellectually substantive conversation than the ones I usually have with you and mostly consists of a bunch of indignant proclamations based on our own intrinsic moral axioms being hurled back and forth. There's also a kind of viciousness in it that it seems no two groups of people ever manage with quite the same level of holier-than-thouness towards each other than French people and Americans for some reason.
I was going to type up this big long post analyzing each of the "hot" conflicts we are currently involved in in the Middle East (Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan), but as I was typing it, I decided it was overkill. In summary, the only one of these conflicts which 1) We are solely responsible for, 2) Was unjustifiably started by us, and 3) Our departure from would leave something unmistakably worse than if we'd never intervened, is Iraq.
I frankly don't know what to do with Iraq, but since it wasn't even on the table for this round of troop reductions, it doesn't seem relevant to what we should or shouldn't do in Syria and Afghanistan.
We did *not* break Syria. Syria is an amazingly complicated clusterfuck with no fewer than 4 outside powers mucking in it's politics, not to mention plenty of perfectly homegrown contention going back to the Arab Spring. What we did do is create a power vacuum in Iraq, which is one of the reasons Isis became a thing, but Isis did not break Syria. It merely added to the chaos and horror of an already horrible situation.
It's worth noting that ISIS became a major contender only in about 2014, and the Syrian Civil War had already been going on for nearly three years at that point. They were also driven out of control of territory in Iraq last year and are now relegated to mobile attacks in backwoods Podunk desert regions. They maintain control over only 2% of the total territory they used to possess in Iraq and Syria. Given the inherent nebulousness and amorphousness of an entity like ISIS, this about the best you are ever going to get. It can no longer claim it's a caliphate, but that's not going to stop lone wolves from blowing themselves up in it's name. We are never going to *eradicate* it. If it stays sufficiently weak for long enough, it will wither up and die hopefully because it's lost credibility, but that's the most you can hope for.
But to that end, one of the things which gives it legitimacy is its
harebrained eschatology which entails an apocalyptic battle with the evil forces of "Rome" (read: us) at Dabiq. Now, we can go in circles all day debating about whether ISIS has legitimate roots in religion or Islam (I say mostly no, incidentally), but it's inane to pretend like religious fervor and purpose-giving is not a good part of its appeal, especially to directionless young men. And to that end, the more its claims of prophecy appear to be correct, the more it becomes legitimated. For it to be tossed out on its ass by an assortment of Iraqi military forces, Kurdish separatists, and Russian backed Assad supporters, is to say the least, *not* what it predicted. The great evil entity of "Rome" looking at it and mostly going "meh" is in fact the complete opposite of what it predicted would happen.
If our goal in Syria has been "defeat ISIS" we've actually done precisely what we needed to do to strip them of legitimacy. 1) Stripping their territory and thus illegitimating their claims to a physical caliphate, and 2) not indulged their stupid apocalypse prophecies by acting through proxies and keeping at a distance. Now, you can argue that we are pulling out prematurely, but again given the inherent amorphousness of an outfit like ISIS, you are never going to get some guy coming forward and offering terms of surrender.
It's only if you think we're in Syria for something besides this that you can make anything like an ironclad case that the work's not done yet, but to that I simply counter that we have no business being in Syria for any reason other than defeating ISIS.
Gonna let the "Clash of Civilizations" stuff drop for the most part because it's a macro level discussion that doesn't seem necessary to hash out to discuss the specifics of Syria. I will merely add that I don't think it's an "American" point of view. I think it's actually the point of view of most of the world *except* liberal Western people who are decidedly internationalist and who find perceptions of cultural intrinsicness and exclusivity both baffling and gross. I don't personally believe in cultural esssentialism, but I do think that most humans believe in cultural essentialism, and that ignoring that usually just leaves you baffled as to why and for what people are willing to fight.
One last point, and then I'll leave off WOT writing until after Christmas (probably).
The claim that the comparison towards what the US does today and what France or other colonial powers did back in the day is a straw-man doesn't fly. The only categorical difference is that current interventionist expeditions are largely based on ideology and previous ones are based on economic exploitation, but even that starts fraying at the edges when you consider all the "White Man's Burden" ideology back in the day and how economics shape modern conflict.
You proffer instead that the difference is "whether or not the invaded country will be better or worse when the occupier leaves," but this doesn't work unless the occupying powers are Nazi level exploiters or the forces trying to oust the occupiers are singularly benign (which is almost never the case). The reason it's not right for us to leave Syria or Iraq or Afghanistan or wherever is what? The answer I'm getting indirectly is basically "because violent, repressive entity X will massacre/exploit/oppress them when you leave." What then is staying to fight communists? What is giving the country up to an autocratic regime that
had it out for ethnic Chinese?
Because the Vietnamese wanted occupiers out? Sure, *some* of them did.
Some clearly didn't. There's a huge pile of Vietnamese people in Houston actually, refugees who fled here because they clearly *didn't* prefer we/France/whoever just get out.
Which Iraqis do you listen to? Which Vietnamese have the right of it?
There is simply no neat, categorical conceptual difference between these conflicts (or any war wherein you occupy a foreign country frankly. Even wars that start off defesinvely start straying in this direction. Look at, say, all the brouhaha over our military bases in Okinawa).
