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PaperclipPerfector  16d ago (text post)   30780 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 2, 2024

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Last war ended with 12 million refugees and over a million comming to Europe. The wave of jihadism that came with a country in the vicinity of Europe becoming a terrorist haven also created massive blow back. There is some chance that Europe simply won't let the jihadists take over this time. Assad is hugely beneficial for Europe.

Quite the opposite. Under Assad, the Islamists and broader Sunni population fled to Europe. If the West had helped the Islamists win, it would be the Christians and Alawites who would have fled to Europe.

I had the thought that maybe the US should back Assad militarily in exchange for kicking out Russia and Iran and recognizing Israel. Who says no to that arrangement?

Alternatively, the US stops occupying Syria's oil and minds its own buisness.

The US produces 130x as much oil as Syria.

No one cares about Syrian oil. If their production went to zero tomorrow the oil price wouldn’t even go up.

It matters because it is one of Syria's main revenue sources. Losing it puts Syria in a permanent state of crisis.

The Iranians had IRGC stationed throughout his country including in Damascus, he wasn’t in a position to tell them to leave.

What’s the steelman for why the US historically was against Assad?

Geopolitical strategy. The US has Israel and Saudi Arabia as it's dominant regional allies.

Supporting the Sunni rebels is popular with Saudi Arabia, both it's government and it's people.

Syria was USSR aligned during the cold war and kept up Russian connections after.

The Ba'ath parties that ruled Syria and Iraq started out as the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, which wanted to set up a Soviet aligned mega state in the Middle East. That didn't pan out.

Basically Syria has always ended up on the other side of US alliances in the Middle East.

Divide and conquer. The US has a long history of supporting jihadists and trying to undermine stable states in the region. The Iraq war wasn't nation building, it was nation wrecking. The goal was to turn the middle east into a buch of small clan structures consistently stuck in internal fighting. Assad provided a stable state which was difficult to dominate. Now we get the destruction of christian culture in the region and a flood of migrant to Europe.

That isn’t a steelman. That’s basically “the US is dumb” which I agree but trying to see the other side.

Assad was an enemy of Israel and the Gulf Arabs, and a friend of Iran. The US is an ally of Israel and the Gulf Arabs, and an enemy of Iran.

[edited to past tense. Welcome to the dustbin of history, Assad]

Perhaps but in a material way? Is he really worse compared to the new regime?

Is he really worse compared to the new regime?

In the limited way relevant to US interests, very much so. In the language of the Cold War, Assad is their son-of-a-bitch, whereas the factions taking over are our sons of bitches. (I do not claim that the new regime is better than Assad for the civilian population of Syria, although it could be).

  • The Syrian Free army (now controls northern Damascus) is an actual US client group, which allows the US to use the territory it controls to spy on Iran and launch airstrikes against ISIS.
  • The Southern Operations Room (now controls southern Damascus) is a coalition of militias which worked with various western and Gulf Arab countries until we stopped throwing good money after bad and decided (wrongly, as it turned out) that Assad had beaten them.
  • HTS (controls Aleppo, Homs and Hama) is a coalition of jihadi groups some, but not all, of which used to be affiliated to Al-Quaeda. They have been co-operating very closely with Turkish-backed secular groups to the point where they can probably be considered as part of the Turkish client faction. Turkey is, of course, a NATO member and western ally.

I think they have a lot of faith in democracy solving problems, and the new state more accurately reflects the makeup of the people.

Countries don't generally pull 180° switcheroos like that simply because it would make all their other allies go "Hey, wait a minute...", especially when it would mean backing a losing horse like here.

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