The U.S. and Syria - by Dia
faetal on 13/9/2013 at 10:44
1) I'm not sure all muslim countries are fungible and expected to take responsibility for Syria.
2) The US was quite happy to sit and read comics while hundreds of thousands were massacred in Darfur.
3) Don't bring up Israel - too complicated to go into and always ends up with people calling each other names.
LoLion on 13/9/2013 at 10:53
Quote Posted by NuEffect
a. I thought we'd decided that mass killings were a Bad Thing. Without wanting to Godwin the thread, what happened to "Never Again"? Because there is a sectarian element to this and even if there wasn't fuck man 1000s of people are dying and we know that Assad's regime is some total bs (just by looking at the election results alone!) so wtf is going on with the morality here?
Well, I don't mean to advocate what the Syrian regime did or does, but you could argue that in comparison with lets say Saudi Arabia where the women aren't allowed to drive cars and people apparently still get their hands cut off for stealing, Syria was quite low key as far as Arab dictatorships go.
As for the moral dimension of all this, much worse atrocities took place without anyone giving a damn - for example the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo was likely the bloodiest conflict since the WWII with some horrifying stuff taking place, though to this day the average person in the west likely doesn't even know that the DRC exists, let alone that something bad is taking place there. The “world community” usually cares only when such events take place in some interesting country (such as Yugoslavia due to its proximity to EU) or nothing else interesting is going on at the moment (like Somalia and Rwanda in the early 90s - though interventions there didn't really turn out that well).
Quote Posted by NuEffect
b. The blatant hypocrisy of the rest of the Muslim world. It's not just other Arab nations, it's everyone. Israel kills 100 people as response to terrorist attack and they go BALLISTIC, protests in places like Indonesia, Muslims in the West up in arms over it etc. (And just for clarity; I don't support what Israel does or how they do it.) But some Muslims kill 1000s of other Muslims? Not a peep.
Well that is not very accurate. There might not be some highly visible public demonstrations, but for example Iran has troops on the ground fighting alongside the regime, while probably all the Sunni monarchies in the Persian Gulf provide money and weapons to the rebels. And Muslim volunteers are coming from all over the world the fight in the war - that hardly means they don't care, lots of muslims are
literally up in arms over this.
And I am sure that many more Americans get killed by other Americans than by Muslim terrorists every year, yet the US reaction is also quite disproportionate - its hardly a Muslim specific thing.
Edit: Damn - I am too slow to type
SubJeff on 13/9/2013 at 10:54
Yeah, Muslim countries aren't really fungible, unless they feel like they want to be. And then you get a lot of copycat rhetoric and unfortunately it's always about Israel so one can't avoid it. Of course they are individual countries but they can't have it both ways unless they're happy to be occasionally told "just shut up, you hypocritical ass".
faetal on 13/9/2013 at 11:08
It's not just Arab countries that find outrage at Israel's action, it's the whole world (except the US, due to their eerie media coverage). Just like it isn't just Israel & allies who condemn Hezbollah, it's also condemned widely in Arab nations. There's this tendency in Western culture to paint Arabs as generic opposers of the west, rather than human beings as diverse as anyone. It's almost entirely engineered by our media which chooses which parts of the response to show. Needless to say "most arabs are pretty decent people" doesn't sell much copy. There are also active groups within Israel who are actively against Israel's racism and military behaviour.
[EDIT] I don't really want to get into an Israel discussion, as that'll be paragraphs and lots of referencing and will get heated, let's keep my main point to being that it never helps to think of these situation to be Muslims vs. The West or get into tit-for-tat, "they criticise Israel, but why not Syria?" stuff. Largely because that's not true. My soon to be wife just got back from her home city of Beirut where there is continual conflict ongoing because of the pro and anti-Assad elements being at each other's throats. The leaders of these governments know full well that any support or opposite for what is going on in Syria, will kick these conflicts up a notch and risk civil war and uprisings in their own countries. It's ok for the US & UK who can watch the news with ludicrously callous phrases like "Shock & Awe" used as graphics to border the reports of how awesome we are for killing a load of civilians, calling it collateral damage and then wondering why militant groups keep forming and not wishing us all the luck in the world.
Gryzemuis on 13/9/2013 at 12:41
Let me try to recap the situation. Please correct me if I'm wrong. My simple mind is just trying to understand.
- Assad is a gigantic arsehole. However, the rebels are probably worse.
- Nobody knows who used the chemical weapons. No proof has been shown to the world.
- The UK (and US) have explained their "proof" as: "We think it couldn't have been the rebels, so it must have been Assad".
- The US (and UK) are known to lie. Especially in situations like this. They started an illegal war in Iraq only a decade ago. With the only justification being: "We think Saddam has chemical weapons".
- Syria in the north borders the conflict area of Kurdistan, which borders Armenia, Azerbeidjan and Georgia. This is Russia's backyard. And has been a big area of trouble for Russia. The Russian do not enjoy the west to mess with their backyard.
- America's first interest (in anything) is how it will impact Israel. In this case, it's not clear. Getting rid of Assad could be getting rid of a dangerous neighbor. However, replacing Assad with Iran-backed Al-Qaeda rebels could be a lot worse.
- America's second interest (in the Middle East) is how it will impact the Saudis. We just learned about that Saudi pipeline to Europe. The Russians don't want that pipeline. Assad blocked it. The Saudis and Europe do want the pipeline.
- Regarding muslims fighting muslims. Maybe we shouldn't look at it that way. It's Sunnis versus Shiites. Go read about it, it's very interesting (I did last week). Compare it to the Christians during the last 1000 years. Catholics versus Protestants. Catholics versus Anglicans. Pink Protestants versus Purple Protestants. It was cause for constant war between Christians. In a way, the fight in Syria is a all about Sunnis (the rebels) versus Shiites (Assad's Alawites).
- Red line is bullocks. 100k people dead because of bullets and bombing is just as bad as 100k people dead because of nerve gas.
- Default action of US and Europe is to ignore massacres until it is too late. Dafur, DRC, Ruanda. They only press for action where are are other reasons besides humanitarian reasons. Why would Syria be different ?
- Any open door I haven't kicked in yet ? Anything I forgot ? Thanks.
faetal on 13/9/2013 at 13:08
The aforementioned facts that the US & UK ignored Darfur and DRC massacres - other than condemning it, couldn't give a fuck enough to properly intervene. Also, the US was A-ok with its buddy Iraq gassing thousands of Kurds in Halabja in 1988. Also, the US and UK were very dismissive of the Sabra & Shatila massacres of in Lebanon in the 1980s where Israeli soldiers basically let armed Lebanese Maronite Christians into arab refugee camps full mostly of women & children and oversaw the massacres of those refugees and then helpfully provided bulldozers to move the bodies out. So yeah, massacres tend to require intervention only when there is some underlying strategic synergy to be had.
SubJeff on 13/9/2013 at 13:16
Quote Posted by faetal
I don't really want to get into an Israel discussion, as that'll be paragraphs and lots of referencing and will get heated, let's keep my main point to being that it never helps to think of these situation to be Muslims vs. The West or get into tit-for-tat, "they criticise Israel, but why not Syria?" stuff. Largely because that's not true.
Well I'm talking in broad strokes here so I don't want referencing and whatnot. I know that the Lebanese are particularly interested but thats because they border Syria, have loads of refugees flooding in, have a lot of political craziness themselves and bombings and whatnot and are home to Hezbollah.
But there are no protests in Malaysia, Indonesia, any other Middle Eastern countries. There are no protests outside Syrian embassies in the West by Muslims and left-wingers alike. There just hasn't been the worldwide response that a few F16 strikes in Gaza would get and that's not only hypocrisy but a pretty clear demonstration of anti-Israeli sentiment in those people who would have, but haven't, protested - and a demonstration that they aren't "humanitarians" but a bunch of prejudiced pricks.
I've been saying for years that the hate of Israel by such arseholes is clear hypocrisy based on the behaviour of other regimes in the area and the Libyan, Egyptian and now Syrian apocalypses are proving it.
If it weren't so awful I'd be smiling.
faetal on 13/9/2013 at 13:30
Sigh:
(
http://www.demotix.com/news/1107384/malaysians-protest-against-violence-syria#media-1107297)
I can't find one for Indonesia, but that doesn't mean it isn't happening, I don't know what their media is like for reporting things like that. The point is that there is no such thing as "Malaysian muslims" or "Indonesian muslims" they are each individuals and fo course there will always be protest about something like this going on. TO suggest that an entire people are like drones to some singular unifying cause based on nationality / religion is to kind of dehumanise them a little. Violence is bad, oppression is bad, and any notion that this violence is better than that violence etc... is not helping anything or anyone.
Hypocrisy of other people, whether real or inferred doesn't mean that Israel (or anyone) get carte blanche to carry on as usual. But that's still missing the point. The US killing thousands of people, with the hope that they're mostly enemy combatants and then air-dropping a load of Levis and Coke to win hearts and minds isn't likely to be of help here. Libya was different - it was done with the backing of the international community, but when the US says "fuck the UN, we're going in", the world rightly starts to wonder what the real agenda is, because the chances of it being teary-eyed sentimentalism about "them poor dead children" is pretty slim given the track record.
SubJeff on 13/9/2013 at 15:03
Quote Posted by faetal
TO suggest that an entire people are like drones to some singular unifying cause based on nationality / religion is to kind of dehumanise them a little.
To deny that people sometimes act en masse is naive.
Search for "protests against syria in the muslim world" and it's all results re: protesting against Western military intervention. I'm not saying that search results are a scientific indicator but they mean something.
Pyrian on 13/9/2013 at 18:31
Quote Posted by NuEffect
I'm not saying that search results are a scientific indicator but they mean something.
They mean that Western media doesn't really care what Indonesians think about Syria.
