Senate The Middle East Discussion Thread

None of those countries are better off now than they were under those, admittedly, miserable dictatorships. Gaddafi also dismantled his nuclear program due to use of soft power and international institutions. He was not a good person. But, sometimes the evil you know is better than the evil you don't.

All of these actions enabled the spread of Daesh.

 

Dictators should not be tolerated. Democracies should never, ever seek to align or support dictatorships; it undermines our principles and beliefs. We should always oppose them, by force if necessary.

We have nothing do with the spread ISIL.

The source of its creation lies in Wahhabism and Saudi export of terrorism.

 

Stop trying to be the British version of Arlon.

 

"How do we deal with the Soviet Union?"
"Just nuke 'em."

 

If you're going to criticise me, try being constructive.

 

*sigh*

Our obsession with trying to overthrow Assad made us turn a blind eye to Daesh in many circumstances. In fact, we indirectly armed them and facilitated their rise and success.

And aligning ourselves with dictatorships allowed us to win WW2. Without Stalin, it's highly likely we never would have won WW2. You have to ally yourself sometimes with people who *gasp* think differently than you. You can't just say Western-democracy is the be-all/end-all of political systems. Why? Well, because it's fairly new, fairly distinct and frankly, somewhat a shambles at times. It's not this holy artifact we can just impose on people and all will be great and terrific.

 

DanielUK Most countries are ruled by what you would probably call dictatorships, and the West not only tolerates them (there's no choice in that regard) but often supports them (usually a bad choice). In the fight against Daesh alone the West supports the dictatorships and oligarchies of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and the UAE as well as nominal democracies-- that is, not really-- in Libya, Iraq, Lebanon, and Afghanistan.

 

Granted, most Arab Monarchies resemble 14th European states - whatever the King says, is the law. Reforms are, very slowly, beginning are (in a decade or so) will probably become constitutional monarchies (that's if the people don't decide to rebel on mass)

As someone said many, many pages ago - the current Middle East is like Europe before the First World War.

 

No, the current Middle East is what Europe (UK and France) did after the First World War. Every country I listed is descended directly from a British or French colony except Libya (Italian) and Afghanistan (one of the few places never successfully conquered by a modern European power).

 

The ME had the Ottomans for half-a-millennium pre WWI.

edit:
I want to go back though to your assertion we should never ally with dictators or non-western style democracies:
If you want to dump Assad, then who in the region do you ally yourself with? No one? You only have a coalition of Western powers that are democratic?
And why not support Assad while Daesh is fighting his regime? In fact, overthrowing him might create a vacuum that Daesh will play up and fill.
Again, Assad is terrible. He is awful. But, is he really at the top of the list before Daesh?

And really, is Daesh to be combatted directly by the U.S. or can we contain them?

 

A man, who used chemical weapons on his own people (a war crime), should not be supported by any democracy.

 

Genuine question, do you think we should drop Erdogan's Turkey in the process too? They're an increasingly autocratic society that have cracked down on freedom of speech, much the same way Assad did before the Syrian Civil War, and commit their share of humanitarian crimes (Denial of the Armenian genocide for example). Then what about the likes of Saudi Arabia? I don't think we need to talk about their despotic nature, do we?

And that's the problem, these are the regional partners we are working with to oust Assad. We can't sit here and demand the removal of a tyrant while claiming the moral high ground when we're also using tyrants in our scheme against him.

 

Good point. Again, if we went by that criteria, we wouldn't have any allies in the region. And we are hypocritical anyway. We are hardly innocent in our treatment of our own citizens at times.

That's why this whole idea of an alliance of democracies is the wrong approach. It's a lie from the get go.

 

We really don't have a choice in the matter most of the time. We may dislike dictators, but what's there to be done about it? In the case of dictators who are allied to us, well it's sort of a "they're going to have a dictatorship anyway, so we might as well get something out of it" deal...at least until the people rise up against the dictator, in which case we ditch them. In the case of dictators who are unfriendly towards us...well we still can't go around toppling every last one of them because there'd be no end to it and we just don't have the resources for that (not to mention that people in the rest of the world generally aren't too keen on seeing us invade countries with little provocation, dictatorships or not). So it comes down to just toppling the very worst dictators, and only when circumstances permit. Gaddafi was certainly one of the worst when he decided he was going to slaughter everyone who rose up against him. Assad is one of the worst as well, but in this case we can't do anything about it because we don't want to escalate things with Russia and Iran. So yes, we can topple Assad, but it'd come at a cost. Maybe there will come a time when we decide that that cost is worth paying, but for now the answer seems to be that it isn't.

 

Excellent piece here that'll have you nodding your head gravely:
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2015/11/spread-wahhabism-and-west-s-responsibility-world

 

Great article. I agree with every word

 

You would think Daesh was killing just Christians if you read American press and watched and listened to our media. This article points out that is not the case.

 

Tom Swarbrick ‏@TomSwarbrick1 10m10 minutes ago
BREAK: reportedly 3 injured. 1 seriously. 1 arrest. @metpoliceuk "we are treating this as a terrorist incident" #leytonstone @lbc
18 retweets2 likes

 

This is wacky but:

Give them their own state. Let them try and run it. Let them pass duties and try and form a government to consolidate their territorial gains. Force them to spend finite resources and energy on statecraft.

edit: look at that map. Just give them Anbar, southern part of Nineveh, and the borderlands of Eastern Syria.

 

Heavily unlikely to work. In the first place, all reporting we have indicates that The Organization's state-building project is already collapsing. More importantly, though, it will never matter. Police states can continue to exist for decades after the rest of their society has been totally hollowed out by famine, mismanagement, and abuse. It's the story of the Khmer Rouge, North Korea, and modern Eritrea among others. Just because one's vision of alternative society fails miserably, it doesn't that his or her grasp on power slips. Nor do the leaders really even modify their behavior very much.

 

So you're saying that even if we did recognize it and it failed as a state it would continue to limp along with the same failed leadership for decades?

 

You mean the Sunnis and Kurds? Yeah, I'm starting to think that's the only way to end the war.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/turkey/2015-11-29/divide-and-conquer-syria-and-iraq

 

ISIS' finance minister is dead

 

Well, duh.