Red I challenge your statements that the rebels are winning. Right now Assad's forces are on the offensive and he is getting stronger while the rebels are facing a very difficult time. I challenge your assessment that this action is the beginning of the end of Assad. I challenge your lack of acknowledgement that the time Putin has bought Assad won't help him. I challenge your assessment that Obama got the better of the deal. Again the articles I cite provide facts to back up my opinion. I do agree the Syrian chemical weapons are a threat to Israel and if Assad look to lose he will use them against his own (as he has already). Now a little forecasting. Assad will probably hang on because of the Iranian and Russian support he receives. However Syria will end up being a charnel house with over 500,000 dead. Iran and the Shiite militias will own Assad and Israel will be at greater risk because of it. Iraq will fail and the Sunni, Kurd and Shiite tribes will be at each others throats. Lebanon, Egypt north Africa and likely the Saudi peninsula will become involved. The whole ME will be a worse cauldron and ill drag most of the world down a few notches. 90% of the above will be because it is time for the people of the ME to determine who and what they are and want. There are two or 3 sides...Sunnis, Shiites, the tribal groups, secular modernists and those who want to stay in the 9th century. I don't care much about the religious debate that is their fight...sort of like Catholics and protestants 400 years ago. What I do want is an approach to acceptance of a modern secular society such as is growing over most of the rest of the world. We were and are needed to be a guiding light on the hill and our position and capability has been severely weakened by the last 2 presidents. W...yes W and Barry have weakened our position as the leader of the world's conscience. W because of whatever impelled him to go after Saddam and do such a poor job of it and Barry because he doesn't believe we either are or should be worthy of the role. He has abdicated any leadership we had remaining after W and the world is worse because of it. If for some reason the ME explodes into a full blown war those two have left us in such a poor position we and all the world will suffer so much more than it should. We and the world needed enlightened effective leadership and the 16 years beginning in 2000 will be show that we have had presidents less effective than we did in the years leading up to the civil war. So Red don't assume I dislike Barry because he is a liberal D or is black. I disagree with his politics as I have with others and I respect his position as president but I call them as I see them. I had much more to agree with in W's politics but he was incapable and I said so often. President Obama is not equipped to handle the job either. This situation is but another example.
You made the unsupported statement that Assad was winning, so I posted a map showing the territory held by the rebels is extensive and includes pieces within Assads lines, including Damascus. Did you forget that? Incidentally I never said that the rebels were winning the war, You said that Assad was winning the war and I replied . . . What in the world makes you imagine that Assad is winning the civil war? The rebel forces are getting stronger and certainly are not being defeated in the field. They take more territory every day. Nobody is "winning" the civil war. But every day that the situation exists, Assad loses more and more prestige, power, and grip on the situation. North Vietnam lost every battle but won the war anyway. Assad loses as long as the rebels exist. Assad loses when he backs down from possessing chemical weapons. He's already lost the insurgency which has blossomed into a full-scale civil war. You want more evidence? Assad is losing control of his own conscripted army. http://world.time.com/2013/09/11/syrias-assad-may-be-losing-control-over-his-deadly-militias/ Assad is losing the confidence of the Russians, which is why they sold him out. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/dec/13/assad-syria-war-losing-russia Al Jazeera knows it, too. Assad will not emerge victorious from this war. This was known as early as February 2011 when both the Director of US Intelligence and the CIA testified to the US Senate that Assad would not weather this challenge. If it is true that Assad will lose this war, why does he continue to fight? Assad continues to fight for two reasons. First, he knows he cannot negotiate his way out of this war. In reality, a negotiated settlement in this case will be viewed as untenable by both Assad and the FSA. From Assad's perspective, any real offer to share power would be tantamount to a decisive defeat since demographics strongly favour the Sunni majority at the expense of his minority Alawite faction. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/02/20132694632720212.html You can disagree with my assessments if you like, but you have not discredited any of them. These are your assessments. Where is the evidence you demand of mine? See what I mean? Look, I will support any facts I state that you challenge, but my opinions and assessments are my own. Take 'em or leave 'em. Obamas efforts at their worst cannot compare with the snowballing clusterfuck that was Bush foreign policy. And I disagree with our position in the world. We are still the only Superpower. We have bases, forces, and allies all over the Middle East. We control the sea lanes through which international commerce flows. Israel is not under siege and can take care of itself. Syria and Iran are no threats to us. Soon we will no longer have to provide lip service to Pakistan to keep open supply lines to Afghanistan. Arab springs are turning Arab threats inward instead of externally. Al Qaeda is a shadow of itself and is still being pounded constantly. China has practically no influence, Russia can influence only Syria (for now) and they have as many issues with neighbor Iran than we do. Iran could actually attack Russia. I simply don't think the US is weakened or in a poor position in the Middle East. I think we hold all of the cards. The old truism is still valid ... Without the United states, nothing is possible. With the United States everything is possible. As do I.
Yah that really threatens a country with 100 or so nuclear weapons. Nonetheless; Israel offers the US nothing but a headache. Bible thumpers paradise.
True, True and more True. What exactly is our stake in Israel? I can currently only think of religious reasons. Am I missing something?
NC our stake is multi faceted. I think the first basis is to cover for what happened in the Holocaust. I realize the Zionist movement predates WWII by many years but when what happened was so publically exposed the leaders of the time felt duty bound to support the establishment of Israel. As has happened so many times before they may not have fully realized the Arab reaction would be so violent. For many years Israel required protection and as we had made the first step in supporting the founding we felt duty bound to keep it up. It was also psychological.They were the underdog. I'll never forget either the 1967 or 1973 wars. 99% of the people in the US were cheering them on. The Arabs were oafish bullies who were supported by the Soviet Union so there was the proxy cold war element. When they welcomed Soviet Jewish dissidents in the 1980's again they were looked on favorably. They were and are strong allies who provide intelligence and can act sometimes where we can't. Take the bombing of Syrian nuclear plants a while back. Finally they are to many a European state with western more an island in an eastern and Muslim world. Religion has been only used in that the Jewish population in the US has organized well to support Israel's cause. It is only in the last 10-15 years that the religious have taken such a strong part of society and the arab's have become a little more politically smart that Israel has been seen in a more negative light. So IMO it is the past and culture realpolitik that define our stake much more than religion.
Thanks Winston. I am indeed aware of all the reasons you listed above. My problem is that the only reason that Israel exists today is because of religious belief and for no other reason. After WWI, the British were given control of the territory, which had been part of the Ottoman Empire. At the time Arabs outnumbered Jews in the area 6 to 1. Even though the British were determined to give the jews part of the territory to form their own state, the Brits were mandated by the old League of Nations to divvy up the territory according to secular reasoning and not because the Jews believe the land to be theirs by divine decree. This arguing, which was being propelled by a political group of jewish elitists called the Zionists. Zionists is not just a term that the Arabs came up with so they had something dirty to call us, they call us Zionists because of this jewish political group. Nevertheless, to the best of my recollection this argument spilled over into WWII, when Hitler started systematically rounding up Jews and killing them. After the war, the Zionists pretty much guilted the rest of the world into giving them their own state and insisted that it be located on what they consider to be "holy" ground, the are we now know as Jerusalem and the surrounding area. Now.....since then, everything that you listed above is accurate and I agree that much of our relationship with them today is geo-political in nature more so than anything religious. That said, you can't blame the Arabs for being a little pissed that part of the "holy" land that they shared the Jews was handed over to the Jews, especially after the Arabs had assisted the British during WWI under the promise that they too would be given their own state. Further, we do not look like honest brokers when we, every decade or so, try to broker a peace deal between the Jews and Palestinians. I am not advocating that we shun Israel but I think we could do ourselves a huge favor on the world stage by taking a step back and not getting so involved in that situation. Every time that Israel starts building new settlements and stirring that pot, we end up being dragged into it, some way or another. If they want to do that then let them do it without our protection.
I agree that it has more to do with politics today but the origins of Israel are firmly rooted in religious belief and nothing else.
