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Kaal posted:So clearly airdropping in heavy weaponry willy-nilly is the best solution? Our geopolitical instability has been directly caused by the world powers doing exactly that throughout the 20th century - arming their latest favorites and then feigning shock when those weapons end up shaking apart local politics and creating warlords. Many of those warlords were picked as favorites solely because they weren't communist. The bar is significantly higher now.
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Dec 7, 2012 17:47
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Muscle Tracer posted:Many of those warlords were picked as favorites solely because they weren't communist. There's also the fact that Syrian society is a bit more cohesive than warlords.
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Dec 7, 2012 17:49
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Pedrophile posted:Well the alternative has been a slow civil war with numerous civilian deaths so... Food, blankets, tents, cooking oil, boots, radios, MREs, no problem. But dropping weapons into the hands of revolutionary groups has rarely worked out well for either us or the people we're trying to help.
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Dec 7, 2012 17:52
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Muscle Tracer posted:The bar is significantly higher now. Keep telling yourself that. Zeroisanumber posted:Food, blankets, tents, cooking oil, boots, radios, MREs, no problem. But dropping weapons into the hands of revolutionary groups has rarely worked out well for either us or the people we're trying to help. Very much so. American support should be limited to dropping humanitarian aid, providing intelligence support, and coordinating diplomatic action. And if ultimately that doesn't get the job done - either accept the situation or take direct military intervention. The era of arming warring factions needs to be forgotten. Kaal fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Dec 7, 2012 |
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Dec 7, 2012 17:58
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Zeroisanumber posted:Food, blankets, tents, cooking oil, boots, radios, MREs, no problem. But dropping weapons into the hands of revolutionary groups has rarely worked out well for either us or the people we're trying to help. Given that the FSA is mostly former military I don't think it would be too hard to keep them accountable, and these days its pretty easy to get intel on the amount of tanks in the area means that you only give them what they need. Additionally since you're the one supplying the weapons you have greater control over what the rebel groups can do or their motives. Right now though they're playing "how many RPG's does it take to reach the center of a MBT" rather than giving them one AT4 to take out a static target. Most of the fighting has been in urban areas which would have put them at an advantage if they had capable weapons. Edit: also it would be much riskier to enforce a NFZ considering how many SAM sites Syria has
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Dec 7, 2012 18:01
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Apart from RPGs they actually appear to have a fairly decent amount of SPG-9 recoilless guns, using the same ammo as a BMP-1, both effective as an AT and AP weapon. Along with that it appears they've got a number of Metis-M wire-guided AT missile launchers.
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Dec 7, 2012 18:08
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Brown Moses posted:Apart from RPGs they actually appear to have a fairly decent amount of SPG-9 recoilless guns, using the same ammo as a BMP-1, both effective as an AT and AP weapon. Along with that it appears they've got a number of Metis-M wire-guided AT missile launchers. I'm guessing these are more recent acquisitions relative to the beginning of the civil war, correct? Also proves my point that these weapons are going to be flowing around the country regardless of who supplied them, without any outside support the rebels have had to reach out to terrorist organizations for weapons which could corrupt the revolution. Should that happen it pretty much would put the power back in the hands of the warlords we're trying to avoid by arming them in the first place.
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Dec 7, 2012 18:13
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Kaal posted:Keep telling yourself that. High-quality retort right there! Please keep telling me how aiding in the institution of a democratic process is equivalent to setting up banana republics.
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Dec 7, 2012 18:16
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Brown Moses posted:Apart from RPGs they actually appear to have a fairly decent amount of SPG-9 recoilless guns, using the same ammo as a BMP-1, both effective as an AT and AP weapon. Along with that it appears they've got a number of Metis-M wire-guided AT missile launchers. To elaborate, even the SPG-9 (recoiless rifle from the 1960s) is adequate to kill any tank the regime has aside from the T-72's, which are themselves still vulnerable anywhere except the front or in areas protected by ERA bricks. The T-55s and T-62s are horrible death traps to practically any anti-tank weapon created since the 1950s and the BMP-1 or BMP-2 are substantially more vulnerable than those.
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Dec 7, 2012 18:17
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Pedrophile posted:I'm guessing these are more recent acquisitions relative to the beginning of the civil war, correct? Also proves my point that these weapons are going to be flowing around the country regardless of who supplied them, without any outside support the rebels have had to reach out to terrorist organizations for weapons which could corrupt the revolution. Should that happen it pretty much would put the power back in the hands of the warlords we're trying to avoid by arming them in the first place. We're going to be busy for years buying up and destroying the various rockets and heavy weapons that are going to be spreading around like herpes at a brothel without making it worse by handing out more.
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Dec 7, 2012 18:17
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It's also not like we would be dropping off crates of stingers for illiterate taliban fighters in a distant, sparsely populated country. Many of the Syrians are militarily trained and understand the concept of chain of command.
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Dec 7, 2012 18:19
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Pedrophile posted:Military bases getting knocked over are going to contribute to free arms regardless, at least by intervening you'd have more direct control over the arms. Giving the rebels some anti tank weapons would have allowed them to tip the scale in their favor earlier on by knocking out check points and shift the fighting style to more infantry based warfare which would have prevented much of the bombing that is currently going on. Also because of our inaction the rebels have been forced to reach out to any group that would offer assistance which has slowly allowed radical islamists to infiltrate the rebel groups and gain more power. I have a feeling that if the military machine were broken earlier we could have avoided much of the deep resentment and retribution which will fall on the Alawites post Assad. The FSA already has anti-tank weapons, the first months of the conflict this thread was full of RPG-on-tank attacks. Now the FSA has tanks of their own. The regime is using helicopters and planes for a reason, and they're screwed with that plan now with MANPADs everywhere. The only type of intervention I'd support would be a Libya style air campaign but Libya's geography and lack of military power made that more straightforward. Dropping advanced weapons into hellholes like this has never been a good idea.
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Dec 7, 2012 18:46
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The U.S. rattling sabres about chemical weapons brings us back to a problem throughout the whole civil war: Why not get involved sooner? The reason no one wanted to get involved before was, Syria, being a much denser and better defended country than Libya, couldn’t be wrangled with just a no-fly zone. Also, the rebellion was weaker then. Bombing campaigns would be necessarily more urban in nature, causing civilian deaths. But maybe, we’re at the point now where the rebels have taken such charge that the rest of the world ready to step in, just in case the worst case scenario comes about? Especially once Syria loses formal Russian and Chinese support in the UN. Golbez fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Dec 7, 2012 |
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Dec 7, 2012 18:47
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Pedrophile posted:It's also not like we would be dropping off crates of stingers for illiterate taliban fighters in a distant, sparsely populated country. Many of the Syrians are militarily trained and understand the concept of chain of command.
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Dec 7, 2012 18:47
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NathanScottPhillips posted:Like the Nicaraguans? Did the USA tacit approve of everything their Nicaraguans did though? I think there are good chunks of the FSA that aren't, well, the Contras. Also, you know, the Contras were fighting against a democratically elected government.
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Dec 7, 2012 19:18
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Golbez posted:The U.S. rattling sabres about chemical weapons brings us back to a problem throughout the whole civil war: Why not get involved sooner? Because we aren't the world police (and shouldn't act like it). Why should we get involved?
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Dec 7, 2012 19:24
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mitztronic posted:Because we aren't the world police (and shouldn't act like it). Why should we get involved? I think the meaning there was that if we were to get involved now, that would be the question. If we are going to act like the world police, why not do it sooner rather than later?
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Dec 7, 2012 19:27
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mitztronic posted:Because we aren't the world police (and shouldn't act like it). Why should we get involved? My point was (as Muscle Tracer noted) that, if the U.S. gets involved now, there will be lots of people wondering why it didn't get involved sooner. I'm trying to flesh out the pro and con arguments for that.
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Dec 7, 2012 20:20
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Golbez posted:My point was (as Muscle Tracer noted) that, if the U.S. gets involved now, there will be lots of people wondering why it didn't get involved sooner. I'm trying to flesh out the pro and con arguments for that. The two I can think of, off the top of my head, is 1) Russian-Chinese interference in the U.N. and 2) Election year politics with a war-weary public.
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Dec 7, 2012 20:41
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Muscle Tracer posted:I think the meaning there was that if we were to get involved now, that would be the question. If we are going to act like the world police, why not do it sooner rather than later? Because history tells us that when we get involved we do so in the worst way possible. We choose to arm the most horrible people. We destroy the most important institutions and leave the corrupt in place. Basically the historical view should tell you that anything else than nothing is probably worse than the status-quo.
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Dec 7, 2012 20:50
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Golbez posted:The U.S. rattling sabres about chemical weapons brings us back to a problem throughout the whole civil war: Why not get involved sooner? The reason no one wanted to get involved before was, Syria, being a much denser and better defended country than Libya, couldn’t be wrangled with just a no-fly zone. Also, the rebellion was weaker then. Bombing campaigns would be necessarily more urban in nature, causing civilian deaths. Let's be clear: Libya was not a "no fly zone." It was a full blown bombing campaign conducted under the auspices of a "no fly zone" that quickly turned into a "no drive zone" and even that smokescreen didn't last too long. As for why the U.S. didn't get involved sooner: a) Not our problem (although the extremely poor precedent of intervening in Libya makes that justification a bit stickier to trot out). b) Russia/China got fooled once with UNSCR 1973 on Libya and weren't going to let it happen again with Syria and there's no way the U.S. is going guns blazing into a Middle Eastern country (these days) without a UNSCR for political cover. c) The only reason the U.S. would get involved now is because of chemical weapons, because regardless of the debate upthread about whether they are terrible awful weapons that are true WMDs or if they really aren't any worse than conventional bombing of civilians, the international political and public perception is the former, and political and public perception (not necessarily reality) is what matters when you make political decisions regarding military intervention. I'd also add that the U.S. has an absolutely awful track record of intervening in situations like this and that doing nothing is a legitimate policy option that is too often forgotten by a U.S. foreign policy institution that thinks it has to solve all the world's problems, but I doubt this would get said by anyone actually in government as a reason for why the U.S. should not intervene.
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Dec 7, 2012 21:34
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I've just put my turned my collection of DIY weapon videos from Syria into a Youtube playlist for anyone who wants to see some interesting DIY weapons. [edit] I've also been helping Peter Bouckaert of Human Right Watch put together a playlist of incendiary weapons used in Syria Brown Moses fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Dec 7, 2012 |
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Dec 7, 2012 22:12
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Brown Moses posted:I've just put my turned my collection of DIY weapon videos from Syria into a Youtube playlist for anyone who wants to see some interesting DIY weapons. Good stuff. You are an inspiration to aspiring journalists sir!
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Dec 7, 2012 22:26
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Muscle Tracer posted:High-quality retort right there! Please keep telling me how aiding in the institution of a democratic process is equivalent to setting up banana republics. They're not instituting a democratic process, all they would be doing is arming quite literally Some Guys with no idea what they're going to do with them - other than an educated guess that they'll turn them on Assad's forces in the short term.
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Dec 7, 2012 22:30
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hobbez posted:Good stuff. You are an inspiration to aspiring journalists sir! While I'm doing playlists I've put on together of Children with guns in Syria.
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Dec 7, 2012 22:39
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Pedrophile posted:It's also not like we would be dropping off crates of stingers for illiterate taliban fighters in a distant, sparsely populated country. Many of the Syrians are militarily trained and understand the concept of chain of command. There are numerous rebel factions, some of which seem to openly hate each other, there has already been violence between those fighting under the auspices of the FSA and the Kurdish fighters, and there are plenty of legitimate concerns of pogroms and massacres occurring after the revolution. Any of those being done with American weapons is bad. And that's not even getting into the "weapons we gave away being used directly against us in 10 years" kind of thing that seems pretty much inevitable. Secondary to any of that - chain of command? Who is the FSA Supreme Commander? Is there one? Could there even be one? Who would a theoretical FSA Supreme Commander answer to? There doesn't seem to be someone who could fill that role either. Every story that has come out on this indicates the "FSA" is a group of different factions and interests.
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Dec 7, 2012 22:39
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/\ If only there was a recent historical instance from the past 30 years of the U.S. arming participants in a conflict where there was a variety of factions operating towards the same general goal but who also had conflicts with each other! That sure would be useful to use as an object lesson here! /\Red7 posted:They're not instituting a democratic process, all they would be doing is arming quite literally Some Guys with no idea what they're going to do with them - other than an educated guess that they'll turn them on Assad's forces in the short term. Not to mention that even if we had some perfect method of determining who was "good" and who was "bad," it's not like the U.S. could just start going around to the "good" guys handing out weapons while making sure that the "bad" guys didn't get any. The U.S. would be beholden to regional powers like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the other Gulf States in getting the aid delivered, all of whom are going to have their own interests for who they want it to go to that may or may not coincide with the U.S.'s. If you want an object lesson for just how poorly this can go, look at Afghanistan in the '80s. All the U.S. aid had to get funneled through the ISI, so competent, effective, not a fundamentalist rear end in a top hat Massoud got zero U.S. arms/supplies/money because the ISI didn't like him, while incompetent, ineffective, fundamentalist rear end in a top hat Hekmatyar got the bulk of U.S. arms/supplies/money because the ISI liked him (which he promptly used to train fundamentalist terrorists from around the world.) And if you need an object lesson in how the U.S. in general sucks at determining who was "good" and "bad," we directly supported Haqqani during that same time period, who is also a fundamentalist terrorist rear end in a top hat (although he was at least semi-competent and spent more time trying to kill Soviets as opposed to other mujahideen, unlike Hekmatyar.) iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Dec 7, 2012 |
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Dec 7, 2012 22:45
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From Syria, here's a big collection of UB-16-57UMP rocket pods, used to fire S5 rockets from helicopters, or extremely inaccurately into Sirte from the back of trucks in Libya https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTxAICs_xIY [edit] And here's my 9K115-2 Metis-M/AT-13 sightings in Syria Youtube playlist Brown Moses fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Dec 7, 2012 |
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Dec 7, 2012 22:54
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Just came back from the gigantic protest at the Presidential Palace in Cairo. Tens of thousands of peaceful secular protesters have completely surrounded the palace and have been chanting all night. The republican guard had cordoned off all streets leading to the palace, but were eventually overwhelmed at 7 PM by the number of peaceful protesters in the entire area, and decided to fall back to the palace premises, opening up the streets. Tahrir square is also full of anti-Morsi protesters, as well as several cities throughout Egypt such as Alexandria, Aswan and Asyut. In Mahalla, the location of the first anti-government riots in 2008, there were some street battles between anti- and pro-MB protesters which ended up with the sacking of the city council building by the anti-MB protesters, whilst declaring Mahalla independent from the MB State, and starting their own Presidential Council. Haven't taken any of my own images, but here's some from other sources: Before the barricades were opened in one of the main streets:  After they were opened from all directions:   Plenty of female protesters, people protesting with their entire families, no harrasment or violence whatsoever. It was a very nice experience. At the palace gates:  The march in Alexandria:    In Aswan, Upper Egypt: 
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Dec 7, 2012 23:32
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Awesome pictures, thanks!Ham posted:
What does that banner mean?
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Dec 7, 2012 23:40
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Best Friends posted:Awesome pictures, thanks! It's a drawing of one of the anti-Morsi protesters killed in the violence that started on Nov. 19th. He's now sort of the rallying cry for the opposition youth specifically. The real picture:  The banner:  Name's Gaber Salah, popularyly referred to as "Jeeka" Ham fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Dec 7, 2012 |
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Dec 7, 2012 23:49
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Thanks. That's really interesting, and the kind of detail that does not make it into the English language media, at least the kind I'm exposed to.
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Dec 7, 2012 23:59
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Here's a must read slideshow from the ISW on the Battle for Damascus, I highly recommend this. [edit] And check out Mr Fancy Pants with his gold AK-47 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHahfyzNLGY Brown Moses fucked around with this message at 00:06 on Dec 8, 2012 |
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Dec 8, 2012 00:00
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It's always interesting to see presentation-grade weapons like that AK, it makes you wonder whose hands the gun has passed through. Granted, since it's an AK it may have just been tricked out by a local gunsmith. But I remember when US forces were going through Saddam's palaces and finding engraved gold MP5s with the suitcase rig. Something like that was almost sure to be a personal "thanks for massive contracts" gift from the H&K rep.
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Dec 8, 2012 00:28
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Ham posted:It's a drawing of one of the anti-Morsi protesters killed in the violence that started on Nov. 19th. He's now sort of the rallying cry for the opposition youth specifically. Thanks for being quick on the clarification. For a moment I had thought it was a homemade version of Our Savior Baboon Christ 
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Dec 8, 2012 00:58
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I still cant believe how many people are advocating arming the Syrian rebels. A lot of people must think that if and when Assad is hung from a lightpole that there will be peace and democracy will flourish in Syria. That to me, and many other, sounds like the most unrealistic scenario imaginable. The violence isnt going to end when Assad is dead or gone. Sunnis are going to be killing Alawites for supporting the regime, and the Kurds might decide they want to carve out a Kurdistan in part of the country which will probably lead to more conflict. I don't expect to see a a post revolution Tunisia or even Egypt in Syria, I expect to see a 1975-1990 Lebanon. Theres already plenty of arms in the country, the US and the west dont need to be adding to the arsenal of weapons that will be used to gun down Alawite and Christian families. Obama is smart to stay the hell away from this shitstorm. Our interests lie with keeping chemical weapons out of the hands of terrorists or being used against our allies. Thats it. The world has been telling us to stop being the world police for decades now, maybe we are finally listening.
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Dec 8, 2012 01:28
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Brown Moses posted:Here's a must read slideshow from the ISW on the Battle for Damascus, I highly recommend this. "  I get to hold the golden gun." is all I can imagine him thinking.SedanChair posted:It's always interesting to see presentation-grade weapons like that AK, it makes you wonder whose hands the gun has passed through. Granted, since it's an AK it may have just been tricked out by a local gunsmith. But I remember when US forces were going through Saddam's palaces and finding engraved gold MP5s with the suitcase rig. Something like that was almost sure to be a personal "thanks for massive contracts" gift from the H&K rep.  This is actually an article about the golden guns rebels captured during the civil war. Qaddafi's Love Affair with Golden Guns I wonder if there's some sort of niche market for gold plating weapons to sell to assholes with money. Darkman Fanpage fucked around with this message at 01:45 on Dec 8, 2012 |
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Dec 8, 2012 01:37
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Charliegrs posted:I still cant believe how many people are advocating arming the Syrian rebels. You could argue that if the more secular/liberal elements of the uprising had been given greater support earlier in the conflict, then all the extremist groups wouldn't have grown so powerful. It seems like a fine argument.
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Dec 8, 2012 01:43
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Crasscrab posted:" That's actually a Browning Hi-Power in 9mm. That Atlantic article was filled with a ton of errors.
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Dec 8, 2012 01:47
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cgeq posted:You could argue that if the more secular/liberal elements of the uprising had been given greater support earlier in the conflict, then all the extremist groups wouldn't have grown so powerful. It seems like a fine argument. When in history has the US chosen to arm leftists over theocrats?
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Dec 8, 2012 01:48
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