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Let’s look at how the F/UK/US-GCC prepares to f*ck us and the Syrians, as Russian FM Lavrov had warned on Tuesday…
“Intervention in Syria is a catastrophe,” says Lavrov
…After a meeting in Geneva between representatives of the five member countries of the UN (United Nations) and others bordering Syria, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, Patrick Ventrell, said the absence of a resolution does not impede the actions of the United States.
“Three times Russia and China blocked the resolutions on Syria in the UN. We tried to convince them to change their position, but could not,” Ventrell said last June. “We have to continue working under the aegis of the United Nations, but we also have a broader strategy that should be respected. We do not intend to stop doing our job just because there is no resolution,” added Ventrell.
“The United States has expressed its intention to intervene, ignoring the UN Security Council,” countered the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov…
“I believe that the statements from Washington and other capitals that the declaration of Geneva is a dead letter are completely irresponsible. This document represents the most important consensus reached in cooperation with western countries, Russia, China, Turkey and the main Arab countries,” said the Russian minister.
Lavrov added that there is an extremely complex ethnic and religious mix in Syria. “Minorities who gather around Assad expecting help in protecting their rights, are also part of the Syrian people,” he said…
Here’s some of the ‘plans’ that are being bandied about…
First, from the misnomer, the United States Institute of Peace (USIP)(PDF!)…
…The Day After project brought together a group of Syrians representing a large spectrum of the Syrian opposition—including senior representatives of the Syrian National Council (SNC), members of the Local Coordination Committees in Syria (LCC), and unaffiliated opposition figures from inside Syria and the Diaspora representing all major political trends and components of Syrian society—to participate in an independent transition planning process.
During the period from January to June 2012, this group of approximately 45 Syrian participants, supported by leading international experts in transition planning, convened six times to develop a shared vision of Syria’s democratic future, define goals and principles of a transition, and to prepare a detailed yet flexible transition planning document. Participants met in plenary as well as intensive working group sessions. While each of the six working groups focused on the specific challenges in the respective policy field, all of the groups were guided by a shared commitment to clearly defined goals and principles…
Good luck with that USIP, this kinda puts the kibosh on that little charade… Syria opposition group not up to challenge, says ex-member…
“The groups inside the council did not all behave as one in promoting one national project,” Kodmani said. “Some have given too much attention to their own partisan agendas, some to their personal agendas sometimes. That resulted in a major weakness in connecting closely with the groups on the ground and providing the needed support in all forms.”
Anyways, it seems the Rand Corporation has long since dispensed with the farcical notion of it being any sort of a ‘humanitarian intervention’…
…Assad’s overthrow would be a major strategic defeat for Iran, weakening the country’s international standing and dealing a heavy blow to the so-called “axis of resistance” — Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah. Conversely, Assad’s survival — or even a protracted civil war — would be seen as a US defeat, which could have serious regional consequences, including increased Iranian intransigence.
In this environment, the US needs a more activist, assertive policy toward Syria aimed at ending the conflict in such a way that bolsters regional stability and facilitates a peaceful democratic transition. This policy should include three crucial elements.
-The US should provide opposition forces with increased intelligence and communication equipment, thereby enabling them to coordinate their attacks more effectively.
-The US should supply arms, ammunition, and logistical support to the opposition, beyond what Saudi Arabia and Qatar currently are providing. Additional weapons — including anti-tank guided missiles, mortars, and sniper rifles — would enable the opposition to launch effective attacks from a distance, and challenge the pro-Assad forces’ air supremacy.
-America and its key allies should help to train the opposition forces to operate these weapons. The training provided by France, Britain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates played a critical role last year in shifting the balance in favor of Libyan opposition forces, and it could have a similar impact in Syria.
To be sure, the US would have to monitor carefully the flow of arms in order to ensure that they end up in the right hands. It should also coordinate its scions with key regional allies, especially Turkey.
Funny how the Grey Lady deemed it necessary to report on this little outfit yesterday, eh…?
Syrian Émigrés Seek Aid in U.S. to Arm Rebels
From a one-room office in an unfinished glass tower three blocks from the White House, an amorphous network of activists is doing what the Obama administration will not: attempting to arm the rebels trying to overthrow Syria’s government…
From the UK’s Telegraph…
Britain and US plan a Syrian revolution from an innocuous office block in Istanbul
An underground network of Syrian opposition activists is receiving training and supplies of vital equipment from a combined American and British effort to forge an effective alternative to the Damascus regime.
Let’s not forget about the French…
UK, France not ruling out military option for Syria
Though UN resolution allowing military no-fly zone unlikely ‘at this time,’ two nations said to be in ‘unity’ on options, including NATO military enforcement…
In a honest analysis, Brandeis Professors Eva Bellin and Peter Krause, lay out what is truly needed if we are indeed acting in a moral Humanitarian fashion…
…The first impulse among many leading activists and scholars was to call
for intervention with force. As some opinion makers in the U.S. argued: What
is the point of having great power if that power is not used to great ends?3 A
consortium of forces in the international community, it is argued, could easily
demolish Assad’s third-rate army, so why not step in and be done with it? But
careful assessments of conditions on the ground have forced most sober analysts
to retreat from this position. The Syrian military, while no match for the full
firepower of the U.S. or NATO, is nevertheless not an insignificant force—and,
more critically, it is enmeshed in densely populated civilian centers. To disarm
it without inflicting huge human casualties would require not simply an air
campaign, as was the case in Libya, but rather, by some estimates, two to three
hundred thousand boots on the ground.4 Such force would be crucial to fully
defeat the regime’s security forces, enforce civil peace, and prevent the subsequent
unleashing of retaliatory massacres by opposition groups. Furthermore, to have
lasting impact, such an intervention would have to be prolonged and would
require extensive investment in state-building, at great cost…
What a clusterf*ck…!
God help the Syrians and us…!
*gah*
14 Comments
As if the invasion of Iraq went so well, and the Shia were our best buds before, during & after.
How do you spell IED and Insurgency? Boom?
To what end? To what end?
There are rumors flying that the practically insolvent TBTF will one day announce a cyber attack, wiping out all bank accounts. At this time, American involvement in the ME will go hot with the diversion that the cyber attack came from these quarters. We will be in a declared state of emergency. And, the crisis will not go to waste.
I don’t know, but trusting the bastards’ narrative is how we got to this point.
At this point reading your latest installment(s) of The Empire Strikes Back saga of the American Empire and its lackey and stooge posse is like wading into a patch of Poison Oak. You know you are going to come out with something bad that cannot be denied.
Thanks CT…stay with it.
Safe to suggest at this point using NATO as a mask/cloaking device is now WashingtonDCs/Pentagon/CIA standard policy. They cannot face the light of day so are employing massive misdirection to make it look like it is not American Empire doing imperialism but the “free world” doing it. The current UN boss is in WashingtonDCs back pocket having just come out again with hoary “Iran wants to wipe out Israel” and “Iran denys Holocaust” anti-Tehran propaganda toss outs.
No doubt done in service to WashingtonDC ongoing desires to detract and misdirect from the non-aligned nations gathering in Tehran.
One can imagine the howls coming from SoS Clinton and the Obama run WH,Pentagon and CIA castles should Russia or China or both decide the UN is useless for dealing with TelAviv’s decades old conduct of brutal occupation,illegal acquisition of land and water across Palestine and Jerusalem. One can easily imagine Hypocrisy Hillary putting on her best Stern face and How Dare They! act.
None of this is going to end well. The humans wanting it and trying to power it up over and over deserve their own Dantian Hell Ring.
The US military does not seem to be on board with direct intervention either in Iran or Syria. At least not yet.
Who knows what CIA and their contractor networks are up to. Compartmentalization does structurally allow for units to go rogue.
Reading between the lines of the Pravda article, it seems that Russia is feeling some diplomatic pressure.
“Doing our job” in the US statement and “intervene” in the Russian statement are ambiguous enough to cover a range of actions only some of which are military.
Of course, the RAND Corporation would take the view that they do. Their funding depends on continual war.
And of course the Syrian opposition would like aid from the US (but aid that they could control).
The Telegraph article is just reporting the information war that we have seen earlier and much better reports on for probably three months – nothing really new in the distribution of computers and satellite phones. And Istanbul has been the location for coordination of NATO with a part of the Syrian opposition for over a year now.
The analysis of resource requirements by Bellin and Krause should (but probably will not be) sobering to an international relations intellectual establishment that still sees the Marshall Plan as the best move the US ever made in establishing hegemony.
I don’t think their estimates were lowballed. In fact, after World War II, the pacification of Germany took 1 Allied soldier for every 8 Germans. The Marshall Plan was implemented in April 1947, replaced with a Mutual Security Plan in 1951. But it was not until 1955 or so that the German economy really had recovered to the point that comparisons could be drawn with countries under Soviet rule. And the level of investment in the Marshall Plan was significantly higher than any development aid since. To get a size of the scale needed, by this formula the US should have sent 3 million troops to Afghanistan and provided substantial infrastructure aid and private capital investment in 2002 and 2003. Instead we started a similar effort in Iraq. What happened with the Marshall Plan just doesn’t work in either domestic or international politics anymore. After 60 years of continuous war, the world isn’t as excited by the US’s Wilsonian project of idealist hegemony as it was in the 1950s.
It’s really not a US clusterf*ck until we do something. Folks in the region seem to be doing a good job of doing that on their own right now. If that changes before the election, it will be likely driven from the region. After the election is a different matter.
There’s lots that we could do to help the Syrians without turning it into our war. It’s a false choice to say or imply that we either sit on our thumbs and watch Assad do his handiwork or mount on assault on the government forces.
The Turks could take out Assad all by themselves, though it’s understandable why they wouldn’t want to stick around for an IED-infested occupation. And I’m sure American neocons are sitting around in their safe think tanks saying, “Hey! We’ve got all of these experienced occupation troops leaving Afghanistan, better to send them to Syria rather than let them come home and maybe make waves.”
It’s a sad day for the West when our leaders make Russia’s and China’s seem so damned sensible. They just want to stay the hell out.
Good idea.
NATO bombing the shit out of Syria with Russians at the anti-aircraft controls.
That should go well.
Hope you all have reconditioned those air raid shelters in your back yards.
Bring on the popcorn.
I still think Gen. Dempsey was Obummer’s best Executive branch appointment yet… Dempsey Backs Away from Obama’s Threat to Intervene in Syria…
It would be difficult for the Syrians to get any more fucked than they are right now. At this point, anyone who fails to submit to Assad’s regime is on the receiving end of the full might of a Russian-backed imperialist military assault. Russia is directly responsible for the killing of hundreds of civilians daily in Syria. Right now – even as we speak – Russian bombs are killing civilians dropped from Russian built planes. And you’re bitching about NATO? It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.
For my part, I stood with the Syrian people when they peacefully protested for change. I stand with them now that they must fight to realize that change. It’s called solidarity. Tossing allies overboard when it becomes politically convenient must be something liberals have learned from their long association with Democrats – I totally can’t relate. I say give them the guns they need to defend themselves.
If Russia and Iran didn’t want to lose influence in the region, they shouldn’t have fucked up their Syrian foreign policy so badly – maybe forged ties with the protesters when the protesters were totally receptive to such overtures or something. Boo fucking hoo for them. Now that the situation exists, *of course* Western interests are seeking advantage – as is every other global player. But the current jockeying doesn’t change the fact that this is a bed made almost entirely in Eastern Europe. Casting the Syrian situation as primarily a Western conspiracy requires a comically selective culling of the available data to create an analysis of pure confirmation-bias.
This was supposed to be a general comment.
Good points all. But hasn’t the general “Marshall plan” approach evolved into COIN by this point? This was the model that was ostensibly behind the Obama “surge” approach in Afghanistan. Of course, even using the COIN formula we were horribly undermanned compared to what the strategy called for to be successful.
I don’t think anyone is envisioning of such an approach in Syria though. I think most folks are visualizing more of an Egyptian or Libyan type resolution. The former would happen if Russians ever pull their collective head out of their own ass and cobble together a transitional situation (like we did in Egypt) … the latter if Russia insists on achieving their goals through an increasing slaughter of the Syrian people.
Not sure either or those outcomes are necessarily tenable with the dynamic … but my sense is that *nobody* is talking about a classic invasion/occupation.
…… but my sense is that *nobody* is talking about a classic invasion/occupation.
*heh* I just love the JCS Chair, Gen. Dempsey…! America’s most senior general warns against rash action on Syria and Iran…!
Addled Trotskyist bullshite.
Ho ho. Still living in the cold war, eh comrade? You don’t remember the protesters in Egypt didn’t include mercenaries?
Pitiful.