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Hang on, when did this 'no-fly' zone expand to be a 'no tanks or armoured vehicles' zone..? The truth of the matter is, Western governments were delighted when the anti-Gaddafi revolt broke out. Ideally, they'd have wanted the rebellion to succeed by itself (Ok, without too much visible Western support) but, when the regime began to turn the tables on the rebels, they realised that they had no choice but to step in, if the rebellion were to succeed. Besides, after the things that Western leaders have said about Gadaffi over the last few weeks, can you imagine how awkward it would have been to have to meet him at future international summits and stuff? If I was in that situation, I'd probably prefer to start a war myself. So, there'll now be a delicate balancing act, where the West has to intervene sufficiently forcefully to break down the regime's military capabilities but, at the same time, keep enough of a distance so that, when the rebels plant their flag on the roof of the Presidential Palace or whatever, this can plausibly be announced as 'The victory of the Libyan People'. I imagine that there're various groups of Special Forces types discreetly advising the rebels already. (Although probably not the SAS, who must still be sulking over the outcome of their previous mission in Libya.) 
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Mar 20, 2011 15:18
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Tarnek posted:Caller-in on AJE reporting that Gaddafi forces are more or less trying to destroy Misarata, that they are using cluster bombs and targeting civil buildings. They've been doing it since early morning and it's possible that the destructions is being done in order to later blame it on air strikes by the coalition. At this point, you should be very careful indeed about any claims that you see reported in the media. Both sides will be lying though their teeth: the West will be playing the usual psyops games that they play in these situations and the Gadaffi regime will be going into overdrive to push the line that evil western Crusaders are bombing yet another group of innocent Muslims into oblivion. So, in the Western media, expect to see plenty of stories along the lines of: "Gadaffi blowing up orphanages to make the West look bad (say our sources)" And from the Gadaffi regime: "USA carpet bombing schools, hospitals and mosques: Libyan population holding firm under the protection of their Dear Leader."
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Mar 20, 2011 15:36
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evilweasel posted:My guess is that it will depend on the situation: if the rebels will win without it, then no. If it's necessary for the rebel advance, they'll find a pretext, but the goal is to minimize the overt involvement in the rebel advance to aid in the political side of this. Yeah, whatever Western intervention is required to overthrow Gaddafi, that'll be what's provided to the rebels, although I'm sure they're hoping that airstrikes alone will do the trick. It all depends on whether this intervention causes Gaddafi's supporters to desert him, or inversely, inspires the population to rally round him. If a stalemate develops, with Gadaffi holding onto the loyalist west of the country and the rebels holding the east, the temptation to send ground troops in to tip the balance could become overwhelming.
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Mar 20, 2011 21:56
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Baddog posted:Are you really sure that is the truth, and its not just tribes A,B,C vs tribes D and E? No, he's not sure at all. We in the West are seeing the TV pictures and immediately fitting them into our own Middle East narrative: Evil despot vs resolute populace. Other people, in other parts of the world, might see something else entirely. There's a good article on this here (read it!): http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/20/bahrain-saudi-intervention-religious-divide You shouldn't assume that, just because Gadafffi's a murderous lunatic (which he is), the people opposing him are automatically peaceful democrats themselves. Like most of the posters in this thread, I know next to nothing about the history, culture and aspirations of the different tribes that make up the Libyan population. Perhaps they just want rid of Gadaffi so that they can invite Osama Bin Laden into Libya! "That's not true!!!", goons reply indignantly. Well, how do you know?? Have you bothered to investigate what the rebels really want at all? At least ask the questions before taking up their cause so enthusiastically.
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Mar 21, 2011 22:19
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Mr. Sunshine posted:
Yeah, if an editor's picking through a hundred photos of an Arab demo, he's bound to pick out the one image that shows a sign in English, because it tells a better story to his readership. As for the no-fly zone, there's no reason why Libya couldn't turn into a stalemate that lasts a decade. Western commentators have underestimated Gadaffi every step of the way so far. I've lost count of the times that some talking head has proclaimed that "this is it" for the guy, only to see him alive and defiant on TV the next day. In fact, I'm detecting a lot of annoyance that Gadaffi is failing to follow the script that's been written for him: "Why the hell hasn't he been crushed by a triumphant uprising of the Libyan people yet? What's keeping them??"
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Apr 19, 2011 19:31
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Ham posted:
If true, it's a huge step forward for the establishment of a Palestinian state. Just been checking the Israeli press and Netanyahu is furious: a real reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah would be a massive blow to Israel's 'divide and rule' strategy vs the Palestinians. We've had so many surprises in the Middle East this year: why not a Palestinian state, too?
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Apr 27, 2011 19:05
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OwlBot 2000 posted:Exactly, he's really not in any position to talk smack and act smug right now. However, the Georgia situation was very much Saakashvili's fault. He did the equivalent of going up to the biggest guy in the bar and throwing a beer in his face, then acting all shocked when he got slapped. Saakashvili deluded himself into thinking that he could attack the breakaway regions of Georgia and the USA would back him up militarily. (Like the USA would declare war on Russia over some pissy little patch of disputed land in the middle of nowhere.) When Russian tanks started pouring into Georgia and Saakashvili's army ran away, he was left looking extremely silly. Frankly, he should be thankful that he's still alive.
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Apr 28, 2011 06:27
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killing_fields posted:Can we talk about the massive Taliban offensive in Kandahar right now in this thread? Sorry, Afghanistan is soooo 2001. Anyway, the Taliban were defeated years ago, all the official news releases keep telling me that.
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May 7, 2011 17:26
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Contraction mapping posted:...our 'information armchairs' of unlimited internet access and 24-hour cable news Don't be so confident of this. We certainly have more information than a semi-literate guy on the ground in Libya with no internet access but don't fool yourself into thinking that you've got anything like the full picture of what's going on. NATO, the rebels and the Gadaffi loyalists will all be releasing highly biased information about the conflict that they think will help their cause and harm their enemies. For news organisations on the ground, free reporting ranges from difficult to impossible and journalists are basicly limited to what they can see happening in front of them: "Yes, there's clearly been a fight here: I can see some bodies on the ground, which I'm told are those of Gadaffi mercenaries... and there's a lot of black smoke on the horizon but I can't investigate what it is because there's fighting going on over there right now. So in conclusion, I'm not really sure what's going on." Don't assume that you've got all the relevant facts, don't assume that you know what's going on. In this thread, we're trying to interpret an ongoing conflict happening thousands of miles away through a mixture of unreliable press releases, tweets, blog posts and guesswork. To take a really obvious example: what are the motivations of the Gadaffi loyalists? The regime clearly continues to command support from at least a substantial minority of the population (or the rebels would already have won) but I've seen very little effort from reporters to explain their viewpoint of the conflict or why they prefer to support Gadaffi over the rebels. There are still substantial numbers of troops prepared to fight to the death for Gadaffi: you can't just glibly dismiss them by saying that they're "ignorant" or "scared" or "dumb" or whatever.
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Jul 10, 2011 11:29
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Contraction mapping posted:I never implied we're omniscient, but if that's the standard you're setting for having the 'full picture' of a conflict going on thousands of miles away for most of us (which would be pretty absurd), then I agree we wouldn't have that degree of information. And I never implied that you were implying that we're omniscient and I never said that you had to be omniscient in order to have any sort of opinion on the conflict  When you call the decision of somebody who's there on the ground to keep fighting for Gadaffi "bizarre" you're assuming that you really do know much more about his situation than he does, which I don't agree with.Contraction mapping posted:Are you discounting the fact that reporters often talk to members from both sides of the conflict, including civilians caught in the middle, and leave it to their readers to draw their own conclusions? No. Contraction mapping posted:I don't know what you'd quantify as a 'relevant fact', but needless to say, you don't need to know every minute detail of the conflict in order to have a fundamentally sound understanding of what's going on. The motivations of Gaffy loyalists have been pretty clear for anyone following the story; they're either benefiting directly or indirectly from the perpetuation of the regime (ie many members of Gaffy's tribe, who've received preferential treatment over the years), or are getting paid outright to show up at rallies and demonstrate support for the regime. There have been many reports on this, so I can only assume you've had the misfortune of missing these stories. Perhaps I didn't express myself very clearly here. The accepted 'narrative' in most Western news reports is that Gadaffi is finished: a combination of NATO airstrikes and rebel attacks will see him off and that it's only a matter of time before he's gone and Libya presumably transforms itself into a western democracy (commentators calling for the fall of the current regime have all been pretty vague so far about what might come afterwards). Now, the fact that he's still got so many people fighting for him tells you that a sizable proportion of the Libyan population does not accept this narrative. Ok, a small proportion of them may be suicidal, fight-to-the-death types but most will be fighting because, in their opinions, they've got at least a reasonable chance of winning. They think that they can either win back all the ground that's been lost so far or, at worst, fight the rebels to a stalemate that ends in partition of the country. It's this viewpoint that you never see reflected in news reports and it doesn't seem to me to be at complete variance with the facts. After all, we've had 3 months of NATO airstrikes, 3 months of reports of rebel victories and yet the regime is clearly still there at the end of it. I'm not yet seeing people asking the question: "So what effect will it have on the NATO mission if Gadaffi's still there in 6 months? Or a year?" NATO went into this mission pretty drat reluctantly: if Gadaffi continues to hang on and countries start pulling out of it, things could yet turn back in his favour. Is it really "bizarre" that somebody who's previously done well under the regime might think that this was a gamble worth taking?
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Jul 10, 2011 17:07
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I normally can't stand this columnist but, seeing as he's just written an article that supports my viewpoint, I'll post a link: Libya: A campaign built on sand http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8629138/Libya-A-campaign-built-on-sand.html (He says that the Gadaffi regime has been far more resilient than people thought, that NATO is desperately looking for an exit route from the conflict and that the rebel's effectiveness is severely hampered by internal divisions. He concludes that the NATO campaign may well peter out with Gadaffi still firmly entrenched in Tripoli.)
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Jul 11, 2011 06:42
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Lascivious Sloth posted:That entire article is a bunch of logical fallacies scooped into a big bag of bias. Note that this sentence could be equally applied to any article written by Con Coughlin Me and him don't normally get along you see: I posted the link because I thought it was funny to see an article echoing my previous post so closely just a few hours after I posted it. Hey! Do you think he read my post and stole it for his own article? I should email him and ask. On a different note, I wonder if bookies are accepting bets on how long Gadaffi's going to last in power? It might be worth investing £20 in a bet on him still being around in a years time, if the odds are reasonably long, say 20-1 against.
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Jul 11, 2011 19:09
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Another couple of articles indicating that various governments are starting to lean towards a ceasefire and the setting up of talks between the loyalists and rebels: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8635613/Libya-campaign-duration-cannot-be-predicted-Liam-Fox-warns.html http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/12/gaddafi-regime-transition-power-rebels Not sure how Cameron'll spin this as a 'Victory', after he's demanded so loudly that Gadaffi must be removed from power, but I suppose that he's got bigger problems on his mind right now!
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Jul 13, 2011 22:32
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The killing of Younis couldn't have come at a worse time for the UK government: just a day after they recognised the rebels as the legitimate government of Libya. The general feeling in the UK is that we shouldn't have gotten involved in the first place and the government itself has struggled to communicate what we're trying to achieve in Libya, beyond the constantly repeated demands for Gadaffi to go. If the people that they've just affirmed as the official representatives of Libya dissolve into warring factions after this killing, the UK public are going to start demanding that we cut our losses and just get out of the whole bloody mess.
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Jul 29, 2011 18:27
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Well, the Syrian government is being remarkably realistic all of a sudden and is ready to call for a ceasefire: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/19/syrian-government-civil-war-stalemate Perhaps this is the first step towards those regional negotiations involving all the main actors in Syria (internal and external) that everyone's known all along are the only way of starting to get this mess sorted out?
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Sep 19, 2013 21:35
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As long as you've got Russia and Iran pouring money and military aid into the Assad regime and Saudi Arabia and Qatar doing the same for the rebel groups, then the conflict could continue almost indefinitely. http://dartthrowingchimp.wordpress.com/2013/10/24/how-long-will-syrias-civil-war-last-its-really-hard-to-say/ quote:According to studies of intra-state conflicts since 1945, civil wars tend to last an average of about seven to 12 years. That would put the end of the war somewhere between 2018 and 2023.
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Apr 20, 2014 10:24
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McDowell posted:Hamas and Fatah have apparently reconciled. Prepare for Israel to try and scupper that with a sudden wave of assassinations and provocations, then...
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Apr 23, 2014 20:18
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illrepute posted:I've been reading that this is a response to the breakdown of talks with Israel, Netanyahu or somebody in the Israeli government throwing down the gauntlet and declaring that Abbas can either make peace with Israel or Hamas. Seeing as how Israel doesn't seem all that interested it's not surprising they went for the latter. The PLO and Hamas are at loggerheads. Israel: "There's no point negotiating, because There's no unified Palestinian authority to deal with!" The PLO and Hamas reconcile. Israel: "We cannot negotiate with a Palestinian authority that includes Hamas!"
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Apr 24, 2014 02:30
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New Division posted:
Well, you've pretty much described it already! 1) scupper any chance of a continued peace process. 2) complete Israel's de facto annexation and colonialisation of the West Bank. 3) lord it over the brutally subjugated Palestinians, under the USA's unquestioning support. You have to admit at this point, that if the whole peace process had never been anything but an empty sham, designed to buy Israel the political space to gain irreversible control of the Palestinian territories, then the situation you'd see on the ground would almost exactly match the situation that we do, in fact, have.
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Apr 25, 2014 06:16
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Sounds like the Iraqi armed forces are just crumbling away in the face of determined resistance. Couple of obvious thoughts: 1) The western occupation forces were supposed to have spent years training up the new Iraqi security force. Evidently, they've not done a very good job. 2) this doesn't bode well for our other military adventure, Afghanistan, when we piss off in a few months time.
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Jun 10, 2014 16:10
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Pycckuu posted:Do you guys think the US will get involved in Iraq again in any serious sense? I can't see it having any domestic support, but on the other hand, you break it you buy it. Politically impossible: ordinary US citizens are just as sick of idiot foreign adventures as people are in the UK. Besides, if a full-scale, 9 year military occupation couldn't build a functioning Iraqi state, why would a limited return make any difference now?
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Jun 12, 2014 07:40
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Tiler Kiwi posted:Then again there might be a sort of mutual agreement to blame the Iraqis for the whole debacle and for both sides to collectively wash their hands of the whole affair like with Vietnam, since both parties have a lot of baggage involved with regards to Iraq. You have accurately summed up what the US/ UK response to this crisis will be.
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Jun 12, 2014 11:20
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Al-Saqr posted:There's some rumblings going around that one of the biggest reason ISIS have been making these crazy gains is because of Maliki the former Baathist officers and former military are now back in active insurgency only this time in the embrace of ISIS rather than on their own, is there any truth to this, Brown Moses? It can't be anything else but this. ISIS has clearly been making alliances and brokering agreements left, right and centre and they're now putting their strategy into action, with the results that we've all seen. If nothing else, it shows just how well-organised and disciplined they are: this isn't some rabble that's got it's hands on a bunch of weapons. Their organisation, leadership and morale are particularly striking* when contrasted with the pathetic performance of the official Iraqi army so far. *they're still absolutely horrible people, though
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Jun 12, 2014 13:30
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The Brown Menace posted:Not incorrect. I mean sure we'd all love to pretend that ISIS is the worst poo poo ever, and they actually are a strong contender, but ISIS is also very good at keeping up (sharia) law and order. They don't just randomly gently caress with people, and many of the freedoms they restrict are ones which the people they govern never used or intended to use anyway. For some, the crazy roaming sharia wannabe-caliphate is a better option than constantly being hounded by thieves and rapists, who effectively get scared away by ISIS' "scary motherfucker" aura. Yes, this is how the Taliban came to enjoy a certain level of support when they were running Afghanistan: they were austere, uncompromising and ruthless but when the alternative was violent anarchy, for many people, the Taliban looked like the better bet. I have no difficulty believing that, if ISIS is capable of setting up non-corrupt administrations that are adept at keeping the peace in the areas that they control, the majority of people living in those areas will be content enough to make their accommodations with ISIS and get on with their lives.
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Jun 13, 2014 06:43
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Gen. Ripper posted:Also Mussolini was an awesome guy because he made the trains run on time. JT Jag posted:The Taliban: Also not that bad. Gen. Ripper posted:Like I thought the lowest this thread could go was people defending Assad and Gaddafi. "On no account must we think about why ISIS is facing so little resistance in Sunni areas, or why ordinary Sunnis might welcome their takeovers! The only acceptable response to ISIS is to bravely defy them on the internet!"
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Jun 13, 2014 06:47
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ISIS has been expanding it's territory and openly challenging the Iraqi state for months now. They took Fallujah back in January and have killed hundreds of Iraqi soldiers since then. It's only in the last few days that the Western media have suddenly woken up and started writing zillions of "who are ISIS??" style articles.
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Jun 13, 2014 12:58
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Xandu posted:What the gently caress is going on in this thread? It's slowly morphing into the Eastern Europe thread. Expect red custom titles and furious accusations that various posters are CIA stooges/ useful idiots being manipulated by ISIS to follow 
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Jun 15, 2014 18:03
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Bridgeburner_ posted:Rauf Rashid Abd al-Rahman, the Kurdish judge who presided over Saddams execution was captured by ISIS, sentenced to death, and executed That's pretty big news if true! Got an English translation?
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Jun 19, 2014 22:48
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Good article on the Iraq situation here: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118353/interview-tom-ricks-crisis-iraq-how-bad-can-it-get The guy points out that all the people blaming Obama for not leaving a residual American force in Iraq haven't thought through what would have happened in that situation. If the USA had had 10,000 or so troops left in Iraq when the ISIS mess kicked off they'd have had the following 3 options: a) Withdraw from Iraq; Obama gets accused of surrendering to terrorism. b) Sit in their bases and do nothing; Obama gets accused of dithering while Iraq burns. c) Join the fighting as partisans of the Shia-dominated government; Obama gets accused of having US troops fight alongside the Iranians and of reducing the US forces to mercenaries in an Iraqi civil war. In the circumstances, having no troops in Iraq and avoiding choosing one of these 3 options sounds like a pretty good call, in hindsight.
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Jun 26, 2014 09:11
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Miltank posted:this time Assad has gone too far. A red line has been crossed.
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Jun 26, 2014 15:33
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Sucrose posted:Like six posts up, dude. It's funny enough to post twice 
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Jun 29, 2014 22:02
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wheez the roux posted:What's the current conversion rate for acceptable slaughter of Arabs per dead Israeli? A few hundred? Well, the IDF have already killed half a dozen or so Palestinian youths in the course of investigating this kidnapping but that was before the teenagers were found dead. I'd assume they'll kill another 20 or 30 now before they're satisfied.
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Jun 30, 2014 19:26
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Real hurthling! posted:the nyt article on it says 5 dead palestinians Yeah, I got 5, too: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28097164 (I found this by typing "how many palestinians has israel killed while searching for the kidnapped youths" into the Google search bar. Google knew what I was talking about straight away )
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Jun 30, 2014 21:08
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StabbinHobo posted:so has nothing happened int he last few days, or are we just on media blackout because of a three day weekend Probably the media's short attention span as much as anything. They already did ISIS last week; time to move on now!
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Jul 7, 2014 05:27
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FADEtoBLACK posted:Does it look like ISIS is consolidating or are they ballsy enough to go into Baghdad and start a larger war? Good question! Here is a lengthy answer (has this been posted in this thread already?): http://www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/ISIS-not-culminated.pdf tl/dr: Attacking Baghdad would be a logical extension of ISIS's current strategy and, although difficult, a successful attack on Baghdad cannot be ruled out, assuming support from the Sunni sections of the city and a continuing woeful performance from the Iraqi military.
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Jul 7, 2014 12:54
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Goddammit, I hate how the media can never focus on a story for more than a day or two at a time. There must be all sorts of poo poo going down in Iraq right now but all we're seeing on the tv is Hamas fireworks and Israeli bombing raids. Yeah, great, Mr reporter, so you can hear air raid sirens going off in Tel Aviv but what's going on with ISIS being less than an hour's drive from Baghdad??
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Jul 9, 2014 14:09
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Volkerball posted:
I have to say, I've seen videos of ISIS military actions and they reminded me of a game of Planetside 2 more than anything else. Lots of uncoordinated clustering at chokepoints, where the ISIS guys take turns to do the "run round the corner of a building, blindly spray gunfire at an enemy in cover 200 meters away while standing upright, then run back again to reload." They literally do behave as if getting shot doesn't matter, 'cos if they do, they'll just respawn in 10 seconds. The Iraqi army must be REALLY poo poo to be defeated by these jokers.
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Jul 15, 2014 06:09
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SBJ posted:Today is a horrible day. We currently have: - Civil war and downed airliners in East Ukraine - Horrible civil war and chaos in Syria - Horrible civil war and chaos in Iraq - Government collapse and incipient civil war in Libya - Palestinians enduring their annual pointless massacre by the Israelis Am I missing anything? Newspapers and websites would really need to have multiple front pages to properly cover all of this poo poo that's happening at once.
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Jul 18, 2014 07:20
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kustomkarkommando posted:
So, the odds of Maliki ending up dangling from a lamppost are increasing by the hour? I was assuming he'd flee to Iran in the immediate future but if they're sick of him then he's stuck in Iraq with all the new friends that he's made.
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Aug 11, 2014 18:20
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Well, lets face it, what's left of the Iraqi government is doing absolutely everything they can to make things as easy as humanly possible for ISIS to win. Short of actually rolling out a red carpet for them, I mean.
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Aug 11, 2014 18:54
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