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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
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You are dangerously naive if you think that those measures alone will make peace magically appear. Like it or not, there are a lot of nasty people with weapons over there, and when they kill each other, the violence spills out into the rest of the world. It's also been going on a lot longer than we've been involved in the region, although we did do a lot of things that made it worse.
edited 20th Jun '16 3:10:33 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Mali was on its way to a civil war anyway (a variety of groups in the north have been excluded and oppressed for a while, unconnected from the rise of Isalmists) plus the French have now gotten that situation under control, via intervention. An intervention by the sound of it that you'd have opposed.
As for ISIS in Libya, they've lost most of their territory now, plus they never got as big as ISIS on Syria, where the US didn't intervene.
Yes it could have gone better, no question about it, but that would have meant more intervention, not less.
Delivery that shit to a warzone doesn't work, it gets grabbed by warlords. There's a reason even the African Union is in on intervention, they're working word on Somalia and getting results.
And until then we should just let people people die by being shot, because it makes us feel bad if we shoot back at the people shooting them?
edited 20th Jun '16 3:17:13 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranI'm not saying they'll make peace appear in confluct zones. I'm saying they'll save a lot of lives in zones that aren't immersed in civil war (and will likely strengthen peace and reduce risks of future war, since reasonably well-off nations are less likely to fall into instability and civil war).
As far as dealing with conflict goes, my first principle is based on the Hippocratic Oath: "First, do no harm.". Military intervention has broken that rule time and time again; it has created new conflicts, and worsened existing ones, and plundered countries while claiming to be helping them. Therefore I oppose it in almost all circumstances.
Name one modern war or intervention - one - where we intervened militarily and didn't kill civilians.
edited 20th Jun '16 3:23:13 PM by Galadriel
And naive, un-nuanced statements like that lead to further disasters.
Rwanda, oh wait we didn't intervention because of the exact sentiment your expressing now, instead we sat on our hands and allowed a genocide.
With great power comes great responsibility.
As for the oath, I think you'll find that doctors still perform surgeries that leave scars, they still perform amputations, that's where we are, but on a grand scale.
edited 20th Jun '16 3:30:14 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranIt's not naive. It's a recognition of the complexity of political dynamics in foreign countries, and the fact that we can never know an intervention will save more people than it kills. It's a recognition that nations follow their interests, and that 'humanitarian' interventions are rarely guided by genuine humanitarianism rather than by political and economic interests. Plunking a foreign military down in Syria as a recruitment tool for ISIS will not bring peace. If a US military presence made the Mideast more peaceful, then we wouldn't be in this situation. You're talking about deliberately walking into the same kind of quagmire the US spent 10 years failing to deal with in Iraq, excep this time you won't even have a faction to back - you're caught between ISIS and Assad. What, precisely, gives you reason to believe such an action has prospects of succees?
If the US genuinely wanted to help Syrians, it would at least be accepting refugees. Canada has taken in more than the US has, and we have a population one-tenth your size. If the US is willing to take military action in Syria, but not willing to take much less expensive non-violent action to help, it's a strong signal that any push for intervention is not altruistic in nature.
edited 20th Jun '16 3:33:48 PM by Galadriel
Kosovo did what it was supposed to. It's a damn shame nobody intervened earlier when the Serbs were going through Bosnia.
Or it's a signal that the US President can't get Congress to support letting refugees in but can get support for bombing the hell out of ISIS, and that faced with "bomb ISIS" or "do nothing" will take "bomb ISIS".
edited 20th Jun '16 3:34:27 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
East Timor also worked, as did what little we managed to do in Bosnia.
No we can't know for certain, but there isn't much we can ever know for certain, in the end we need to either roll the dice or accept things as they are. When the people who suffer and are dying are asking us to roll the dice, we roll the fucking dice.
Not if done right, we've done it right in the past, we can again.
No I'm talking about working out a deal, with the Kurds, the Russians, the Iranian and the moderate rebel factions. We have people who want our help, why the hell shouldn't we give it to them?
Why do I think it will succeed? Because we know that it can, Bosnia (once we turned up), Kosovo, Sierra Leon, East Timor, he'll for state building we've even got Germany and Japan. It can be done right, we just have to actually commit.
The US being an asshole in department A is not a good reason to be an asshole in department B, it's a reason to stop being an asshole in department A.
What push? The very tiny push for an air campaign? Or the push made by people in this thread (who are not (as far as I know) US policy makers)? The tiny push that exists isn't for altruistic reasons, but you know what? I'll fucking take it. People don't help little old ladies cross the street for purely altruistic reasons, people don't return lost purses for purely altruistic reasons, people don't become firefighters for purely altruistic reasons, but when the result is good and makes the world better I'm willing to take it.
edited 20th Jun '16 3:47:25 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranIf the US must do everything with an altruistic motive, then it will not do anything at all.
Non Indicative UsernameArguably what we did in Bosnia was counterproductive, but only because we had let it get that out of control in the first place (Srebrenica turned massacre when the Serbs knew that a peace deal was imminent, and moved to wipe out the Bosniac enclave that they had left alone for over two years prior).
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What's your objective? Keep Assad in power? He's still a brital dictator hated by much of the population. Remove Assad and try to set up a democracy? That's worked almost nowhere in the Mideast as of yet, not even in Egypt where the attempt had its source in popular support rather than foreign power; and Russia, who have supported Assad, are unlikely to be on side with it.
I am in favour of working with all the parties you mentioned to try to broker peace within the region, while accepting that the peace will likely involve many less-than-ideal compromises, but I think a boots-on-ground US military intervention would likely create more conflict rather than less.
An air campaign generally translates to "bombing civilians", so I'm against that. Even the comparatively (comparatively! compared to all-ourt war) limited US drone attacks in the Mideast keep killing civilians, despite Obama's contention that any male over age 15 who's killed by a drone strike is ipso facto a terrorist.
edited 20th Jun '16 4:07:07 PM by Galadriel
Donald Trump fired his controversial campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.
It seems that Trump's kids got him canned.
edited 20th Jun '16 4:17:44 PM by Demonic_Braeburn
Any group who acts like morons ironically will eventually find itself swamped by morons who think themselves to be in good company.Less dead civilians. Yes it's complicated, but we managed a deal with Bosnia and with Kosovo, perhaps we can only protect some territory and not all, maybe we'd have to accept Assad having control over parts of Syria, it's gonna be ugly, but sitting on the sidelines is not a good option.
As for the Russians, they already pulling in rebels groups, they've worked with the Kurds, they're not that committed to Assad personally, to a Russia friendly regime yes, but Assad himself isn't a must for that.
If done Iraq style sure, but that's not what I've been suggesting, make a deal with the Russians, make a deal with the Kurds and the SDF, hell just get NATO and some neutral countries like India to be on the same page.
It also translates to "providing cover for smugglers getting people out of ISIS territory", "helping Kurdkish groups retake land", "providing covering fire to allow the evacuation of civilians surrounded by ISIS", "cutting ISIS oil supplies" and "reducing both the number of ISIS fighters and the the ability of living fighters to operate at full efficacy".
Are you also against thosue things? Because it's a package deal.
That's because the CIA are dicks who tend to blow shit up regardless of civilians being presents. Nobody is asking for the CIA to be out in charge of Syrian airstrikes.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

You are aware that all those things are literally impossible to prevent or treat while the country is a combat zone right?
You need stability and peace before you can even begin to work on disease prevention or clean water distribution.
Oh really when?