They’re finger eating good.
Well, I don’t think it misses the point at all. I agree that irrelevance is bad, and I agree that the choices we made were bad, partly because they did make us irrelevant. But I don’t buy that it would have been a net positive to do something that worsened the situation but kept us a major player.
I guess I sort of feel that some situations are simply unwinnable. I cannot think of much we could have done in Syria that would have both improved the lot of the Syrian people and improved our standing in the world, and what I can think of wasn’t likely to happen by any stretch of the imagination.
You won’t be laughing when Jesus comes back and the zombies rise up!
He starts by citing John 5:28-29, which reads: “Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out - those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned.”
http://vidmax.com/embedvid/140282-Preacher-Claims-The-Bible-Writes-of-The-Coming-Zombie-Apocalypse-
Well I mean Jesus was the first zombie, you know.
The real tragedy is the failure of US conservatives to embrace the idea of the UN. At its best the UN was designed for this role; to step into the voids where states and governments fail and use global resources (intellectual and material) with international consensus to contain or resolve these crises.
In truth after the First Gulf War the UN became increasingly identified with “evil”; i mean, literally, there is a branch of conservatism that thinks the UN is some giant conspiracy, once US military hegemony and the collapse of the Great Red Threat made alliances seem obsolete. This is almost entirely due to domestic culture war politics, but also, increasingly, the feeling among conservatives that they had the right, the power, and the ability to reject globalization and that the values of globalization were a threat to their own identities. Perhaps one of the greatest mistakes the US ever made was not embracing Yeltsin and Russia as our “great friend” and fully supported their transition to Democracy; instead through the 90s and into the 2000s Russia was seen through the lens of cold-warrior politics. And then eventually Russia became once again exactly what those sceptics perceived.
I think the problem with the demonization of Syria speaks to a still-lingering naivete and orientalizing of the world by US citizens. We still are mostly a giant island nation. There is this unspoken feeling that these places simply maintain a veneer of civilization over an unruly, uncivilized core; like those sterile, government designed parks in Almaty or some -stan, empty architectural achievements made for foreign investors to emulate European city planning and design, without European culture, politics, or social or political values. And the truth of that seems to tragically borne out over and over again, that when the central government collapses, anarchy and civil war immediately grip the nation. That the “unspoken” bias. The actual demonization of Syrian refugees is pretty depressing. But the constant attacks in Paris and London, the New Year’s Eve sexual assaults in Germany, all piled on this great fear that immigrants really were “bad”, that there is just something wrong with Kansas^H^H^H the Middle East, and the best thing to do is shut the door and squint.
I was in the middle of the Cold War system when the wall came down in Berlin (hell, I was living in Berlin at the time). At first, there was a completely justified and necessary wariness as the USSR imploded and we waited to see what emerged. After all, the military and intelligence apparatus there wasn’t going to go away or change its orientation over night, any more than ours were.
But as it became pretty clear that the last thing Russians wanted at that time was to continue a costly, fruitless, and ultimately destabilizing rivalry with the USA over what often turned out to be crap the vast majority of neither country cared about, we found ourselves not able, or not willing, to back out of the Cold War mindset. One big reason was money; there was so much of our economy that was deeply embedded in the military industrial complex, and which without a persistent and serious threat was likely to suffer severe downsizing. Another was the sheer amount of effort we had invested in studying everything Russian or Soviet; as it was a hell of a lot easier to change some of the acronyms on our studies and target lists than it was to train a whole new generation of analysts on what was emerging as the real threats around the world, it isn’t too surprising that the Russians stayed in their traditional role for us.
But also, Russia was and is a lot more understandable and conceptually familiar than anything from the Far or Middle East, to most Americans. In some ways, we’ve never really felt that non-European foes or potential foes.warranted the full-on “clear and present danger” mentality, nor has conflict or potential conflict with non-Europeans been anywhere near as prestigious or capable of garnering support for countermeasures or what not.
Sure, there’s a ton of discussion now about North Korea, and ISIS, and what-not, but there’s no real fire there. We had people who made their careers on being Russia haters, and it wasn’t just because of the vastly more dangerous nature of the USSR. There was real prestige, there, it was the big leagues. Even China has trouble getting Americans to really commit to fanatical opposition.
So I firmly believe that a combination of inertia, Eurocentrism, and bureaucratic forces have a lot to do with our failure to change our spots in re Russia, when we had the chance.
Damn. I traveled to Berlin in '87 through Checkpoint Charlie. Can’t imagine what an incredible, turbulent time it was living there when the wall came down.
As far as the MIC, it’s why we go out and find new wars to fight every few years. Gotta keep people afraid and those military budgets high.
This is awesome:
Prime excerpt:
Prior to Kushner’s talk, Katie Patru, the deputy staff director for member services, outreach, and communications, told the assembled interns, “To record today’s session would be such a breach of trust, from my opinion. This town is full of leakers, and everyone knows who they are, and no one trusts them. In this business your reputation is everything. I’ve been on the Hill for 15 years. I’ve sat in countless meetings with members of congress where important decisions were being made. During all those years in all those meetings, I never once leaked to a reporter … If someone in your office has asked you to break our protocol and give you a recording so they can leak it, as a manager, that bothers me at my core.”
WIRED has obtained a recording of Kushner’s talk, which lasted for just under an hour in total.
It’s so awesome that someone was recording the talk, while she was saying how recording the talk would be a breach of trust.
So Awesome.
Somebody is so getting fired.
Hey! High-five! I was stationed in Berlin then! 6-502 Infantry Berlin Brigade.
Jesus was a lich, sir!
I expected better from this crowd.
There are things we can do relatively easily that would probably have made a difference. A no fly zone was a viable option in the beginning and continued to be one until the Free Syrian Army collapsed. At the very least it would have decreased the effectiveness of Assad army and lowered the morale.
The northern no fly zone saved the Kurds after the 1st Gulf war. The southern one reduced the killing but ultimately failed because it didn’t include helicopters.
News leaked out of Syria today that Bassel Khartabil was executed shortly after his disappearance several years ago. What a shame to destroy the brightest minds of a country and culture.
That’s possible. My problem with that is that the so-called Free Syrian Army was just one part of the anti-Assad coalition. We couldn’t protect them without protecting all the other parts, many of which are, in effect, ISIS/ISIL/Daesh whatever you want to call them, or the equivalent. Another problem is that I’m still not at all convinced that the destruction of Assad’s government, as justified, morally, as it may be, would have resulted in a net positive for the Syrians. I could hope that it would, but I fear that the FSA, or at least the parts of it that we warmed up to, were such a minority that they could never have hoped to keep power without being so backed up by us that they’d be seen as a Western puppet.
But yeah, given the horrors of the past few years, it’s not at all unreasonable to speculate that we could have done something to improve things. I just haven’t heard anything that really convinces me, nor did I at the time. I firmly believe that acting just to feel better about something is poor policy. I like to see results.
Of course,you could argue that you have to take some risks sometimes, too. One thing everyone can agree on probably is that whatever we did or didn’t do sure as hell didn’t work.
Cool!
I was in Berlin twice, actually. Once as a kid, c. 1970-ish, when my father was stationed there (we lived in Dahlem relatively near the PX and stuff), and then when I worked there many years later, 1988-90. Then I was a civilian with Detachment 1 of the 690th Electronic Security Wing, at Marienfelde (the Air Force equivalent of Teufelsberg, sorta).
Heh, I was a petulant teenager in Berlin at that time, child of someone with a vaguely defined job helping with “transitioning.” (I also spent some time in Russia doing the same … oh, the memories!)
Man, all you guys are making me envious, because I never made it to Berlin when I lived in Germany, nor on two subsequent vacations. The last of those was about a month and a half before all the poop hit the ventilator with the wall and such. At the time, all the news in Germany was about East Germans “going on vacation” to Czechoslovakia and going directly from there to Bavaria, because by that point the authorities there had pretty much said “fuck it” and weren’t doing anything to stop them.
And @Dan_Theman I’m guessing that by “oh the memories” you’re referring to all the gorgeous Russian girls.
LOL - my son is in his 20’s, and he’s a little disappointed I still haven’t told him about what happened over there. Suffice to say, the Russian government was a -fine- host and I learned a lot about the culture.
I traveled to Europe and back on two Soviet transatlantic passenger liners (Aleksadr Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov)* as a mid-late teen in 1977 and -78, and I can attest that at least the food they were serving us Westerners was first-rate. Can’t speak to any other considerations (I was 16 and 17 at the time). But damn that was some good food–and being that age I could really put it away. :-)
*it was the best deal and my mom was phobic wrt flying.
I too visited Russia pre-Putin days, as well as Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey as part of multiple Black Sea visits on the US fleet command ship I served on. At that time (96ish,) we were the first US ship to have ported in Novorossijsk since World War II. It was an amazing thing, too. The entire pier was lined with current and former Russian military, many old vets were even wearing old WW2 uniforms and were crying as we walked through and shook hands and greeted people.
It was as moving as seeing the emptiness of the storefronts on that same visit. Things were still slowly shifting from the fall of the Soviet Union five years prior.
All of those memories are in stark contrast to just how much the world has changed in that region since then. What seemed to be a genuine time period of US outreach to that region then has become mired in a lot more posturing and wariness of today, especially so with Russia and Turkey.