Middle East Thread of Despair: More Broken Than Syria

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SilentD: Aug 22, 2012; by toby

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/09/a-diplomat-in-the-real-and-virtual-world.html

Dunno if you guys saw it yet but Vile Rat is on The Dish now.

# ¿ Sep 13, 2012 17:07

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 18:00

SilentD: Aug 22, 2012; by toby

Sushi in Yiddish posted:

The Time article is really showing how hosed up things are.

It's like somebody turned over a rock and assholes from all around the world are boiling out from under it.I didn't think that we'd have right wing militias in California.

The detective work being done to uncover the people who made the movie is really fascinating, but it would also be terrible if those people are killed by extremists and become martyrs for their own terrible causes.

California has plenty of them. Remember the entire "proud right wing extremist" dude? He was from Cali. And parts of it are fairly rural.

Most states have areas full of wingnuts once you get out of the major urban centers.

# ¿ Sep 13, 2012 17:47

SilentD: Aug 22, 2012; by toby

international owl day posted:

It seems like it may have further stoked aggravation towards the US, but only in Cairo, and the other protests are just our run of the mill 9/11 celebratory attacks, but Libya is so filled with guns and enemy militias that it got really violent. The movie doesn't seem at all connected to the Libyan riots.

The film is being blamed for the fiasco in Yemen now as well. In the case of Libya it seems the attack was already planned and the movie wasn't really the cause.

# ¿ Sep 13, 2012 20:52

SilentD: Aug 22, 2012; by toby

tekz posted:

And as long as the US government continues to fund Pakistan and the ISI. It still puzzles me why the US continues to supply an organization that is involved in attacks on their own soldiers.

India, that's why Pakistan funds them, and we are hosed either way. We need to fund Pakistan to buy influence, Pakistan needs to fund the Taliban because of India and that region is lawless.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2012 05:48

SilentD: Aug 22, 2012; by toby

GD_American posted:

When you say spies, you're kind of embedding it with a Cold War connotation that doesn't entirely fit.

All kinds of intelligence agencies are operating in the region. Besides reporting intel up their chain of command, the US ambassador is also kept in the loop on a lot of this, since part of his job is to diplomatically act on that intel, as well as advise SecState and the President. So his office is naturally a large clearinghouse for not just raw intelligence, but compiled and analyzed intelligence, as well as classified directives and orders from stateside. It's not that the CIA is using the embassy as a cover for playing spy games (I suspect it'd be kind of pointless in Libya, where they have carte blanche right now); it's that for the ambassador to do his job effectively he has to be largely plugged into the intelligence gathering going on in the country.

They were killed at the consulate, not the embassy. It's not the same thing by a long shot.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2012 07:00

SilentD: Aug 22, 2012; by toby

Mans posted:

It's more about the completely exageration that is a multi million dollar robotic aereal robot that can dish out more explosive ordinance than entire artillery brigades in WW2 being used to kill five dudes, one of which has an assault rifle. I kind of think there's a law against this kind of thing.

Plus, it's only safe in the sense that no American soldiers die. All those people that might or might not be an enemy soldier might agree otherwise about it's safety.

It's certainly safer to the enemy and non combatants than carpet bombing them, which is what we used to do before precision munitions.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2012 20:04

SilentD: Aug 22, 2012; by toby

Fog Tripper posted:

And then Skynet becomes self aware.

You have it right about folks not wanting to put soldiers in harms way. This is not a sport where the sides agree to play on a level field.

War needs a points value system like Warhammer 40k, and Orks!

# ¿ Sep 14, 2012 20:31

SilentD: Aug 22, 2012; by toby

Fine-able Offense posted:

I'm sure all the mujahadeen that America armed and trained just got on a spaceship and flew to Venus, and were replaced by an entirely different group of individuals.

You're forgetting about the numerous warlords and their armies all over Afghanistan. The Taliban were never the only armed group there.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2012 23:00

SilentD: Aug 22, 2012; by toby

New Division posted:

Thanks for this, it's a nice breakdown. Looks like military aid makes just under 30% of all foreign aid.

Yeah, and it's going to get worse. I work in international development and the new shtick is all "public private partnerships" which is code for "slash funding to USAID and let the Gates and Clinton foundations pick up the tab" and also turns into "getting money from oil and natural resource developers so they can grab everything they can while we give people medical care".

# ¿ Sep 15, 2012 00:13

SilentD: Aug 22, 2012; by toby

brakeless posted:

A cuople of things about the drone/"collateral damage"-chat a couple of pages back:

If you can blow up a Bad Dude while he's in his house, you'd think that it'd also be possible to blow him up while he's on a lonely stretch of road somewhere near his house. Also, hiding behind civilians is a pretty interesting euphemism for living with your family. It's not like a Bad Dude sees a drone coming for him and then rushes into his house to cower behind his wife and kids. It's more like he goes about his Bad Dude day and then at some point a missile comes through the living room window, apparently only killing less than 1/3rd of a person for every U.S Army certified Bad Dude.

Great job.

That's all fine and good. But it's not as if the people we are fighting don't have a history of storing weapons in schools and other such places so when they are killed they can whip a mess about civilian killings. Their doing that deliberately and actually want civilians to get blown to poo poo.

War's a nasty business which is why we should try to avoid them.

# ¿ Sep 15, 2012 01:08

SilentD: Aug 22, 2012; by toby

Turkey has a good enough military they could do it on their own, I doubt they need or even want help. They probably just want official approval to get things in a row.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2012 20:43

SilentD: Aug 22, 2012; by toby

Zedsdeadbaby posted:

This is how regional conflicts tend to start, yeah. I doubt it'll get worse though, Turkey has no spine and the UN has no will to do anything about it.

Turkey does have a spine and they have a very good military. They certainly don't need any help.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2012 20:57

SilentD: Aug 22, 2012; by toby

Nenonen posted:

It's not quite so simple. Damascus is a long distance away from Turkey making it logistically difficult and expensive to reach (minimum objective to topple Assad) and Turkish military has no experience of fighting against a regular army.

Uh no, Turkey would have no problems curb stomping the Syrian military in the situation it's in now. Even if Syria wasn't in chaos Turkey has one of the largest, most modern, best equipped military's in the region. They also can get a bit honor crazy.

You don't want to mess with the Turks, they are one of the few military powers in that region that wouldn't be all that afraid of Israel if it came to an actual conflict.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2012 21:19

SilentD: Aug 22, 2012; by toby

Nenonen posted:

NOTHING CAN GO WRONG, THEY WILL WELCOME US AS LIBERATORS

Where have I heard that before?

I never said nothing can go wrong and they will welcome them as liberators. But you know, they don't have to stay. Turkey can easily roll anything in Syria that they consider a threat and get out. They can kill what they need to kill and Syria can't do much at all about it.

poo poo can always go wrong, on the other hand if you think that an already weakened and chaotic Syrian military can do much of anything to stop the Turks from taking out things they feel are a threat, or just obliterating them I don't know what to say.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2012 21:39

SilentD: Aug 22, 2012; by toby

Nenonen posted:

First define 'legit' casus belli because the concept is all about political theatrics and propaganda. Governments don't start wars because a casus belli emerges, they make themselves a casus belli because they want to start a war.

Eg. compare the evidence presented by US government against Iraq in 2003 to how much poo poo countries like Pakistan tolerate from USA.

Shooting down a fighter plane and lobbing mortars into a country are both legit.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2012 22:37

SilentD: Aug 22, 2012; by toby

steve1 posted:

Syria apologized, but what about this second hit? It's got to be either opposition/rogue military trying to get Turkey to intervene or Kurds just stirring the pot but the acknowledgement & apology for the first incident makes this really weird. We do know the border regions are pretty jacked up right now with plenty of evidence of some stations being overrun by opposition. And yeah, Turkish officials said they found their target via radar I believe.

I'm fairly sure any regular military member would be aware that any competent armed force (of which Turkey qualifies) can track artillery shots in the air and even if they miss figure out where the shot came from and who fired it really loving fast.

Firing artillery shots at a competent military is a sure fire way to make sure wherever you are is a crater shortly after.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2012 23:25

SilentD: Aug 22, 2012; by toby

Delta-Wye posted:

Doesn't seem much different than the spy plane China knocked out of the air except it's cheaper and there is no crew. I really don't think it would form casus belli.

No, it's much different.

That spy plane wasn't shot at. The Chinese plane was loving with them (flying to close and cutting into the air the needed) and an accident happened. That sort of screw ballery is fairly common among military jets. It's not considered hostile, it's just the two sides loving with each other. We used to do it with the Russians all the drat time and we still do it with the Chinese.

The Iranians shot at the drone. That's hostile and not everyday military rival asshattery.

# ¿ Nov 9, 2012 02:08

SilentD: Aug 22, 2012; by toby

If the UAE and Iran actually started shooting at each other the US Navy would simply cruise missile every single plane, runway, and SAM. Then the Airforce would come in and we'd claim air superiority.

Most air forces we come into contact with get blown up before they get into the air now.

# ¿ Dec 5, 2012 16:12

SilentD: Aug 22, 2012; by toby

Crasscrab posted:

You're a funny guy. Iran isn't Iraq. US forces will take losses, especially if the fighting takes place in the Persian Gulf where the Iranians have ample anti-ship missiles.

Nobody said they were!

I was simply commenting on Iran's "Air Force". The current US approach to these things is to simply scream "our cruise missiles will blot out the sky" and blast every plane someone has while FUBAR'ing the air strips we decide we don't need.

Also... nobody is going to win a naval war with us, Republican fear mongering over our "smallest Navy EVARRRRRRRRRRRRR oh noes the Chinese" nonsense aside. Our military is insanely good at destroying things and killing people, occupations and rebuilding not so much.

The Iranians could certainly gum up the straights for a bit and kill a few people, but if we decided we weren't screwing around sent more than one carrier group there the amount of carnage we could inflict is astronomical.

But all of this is moot, I don't think the Iranians are stupid or crazy enough to get into a naval battle against the US.

SilentD fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Dec 5, 2012

# ¿ Dec 5, 2012 19:41

SilentD: Aug 22, 2012; by toby

RE: WMDs and Iraq

Chemical and biological weapons are actually fairly easy to make for an industrial nation, it's just cheaper and easier to buy Russian or US equipment off the shelf. In a few cases there are biological agents that only the US, UK, Russia or some major player has. There is no way for another nation to get it's hands on a custom virus or say smallpox, and these weapons aren't sold to third parties.

Nuclear is the big one. It's fairly hard to actually manufacture a proper nuclear weapon and building a proper delivery system is even more complex. Take North Korea, the on going joke being we use nukes like that for maibox pranks because of how pathetic their tests are (conventional weapons make a bigger boom now). Then take a look their delivery system, their missile launches are always a hilarious failure.

The problem with Saddam was that we sold him the weapons, we knew we sold him x and he used y and x-y was not 0. And while he did destroy or ship out the weapons he pretended it wasn't the case out of paranoia.

Syria has chemical weapons full stop.

quote:

On that note, I kind of wonder whether Assad is trying to pull the same strategy that the Kims have used in North Korea: "look at me, I have WMDs and I'm one crazy unpredictable motherfucker, so you'd better give me what I want." If he does want a clean and relatively comfortable exit, he might be able to get it by making an implicit threat and accepting a comfortable retirement in exile in exchange for not doing something he never wanted to do in the first place.

Won't work at all. It's not WMD's that prevent us from turning NK into a giant crater. The problem with NK is three things. First their conventional artillery could incinerate Seoul and cost millions of lives along with crippling SK, even though SK would steam roll them in a military conflict. Second any sort of war with NK would have a staggering cost in life lost, nobody wants it (Clinton came closer than anyone till Powell talked him out of it). Lastly China does not want to dealing millions of brainwashed and starving North Koreans streaming over it's border.

# ¿ Dec 6, 2012 16:57

SilentD: Aug 22, 2012; by toby

mitztronic posted:

warning: super cute bunnies being killed in this video. don't click if you don't want to ruin your day

e: VVVV what the gently caress is a "concern troll"? And believe it or not we post disclaimers on this site for disturbing videos (i.e. every single disturbing video in this thread is marked NMS, go ahead and take a look back. just because we have all seen multiple videos of people with their intestines hanging out and dead/maimed children doesnt make this video any less disturbing)

Because with all the videos of people being killed in this mess that's not much. And for people like me who've owned pythons what happened there is really drat tame. Rabbits scream when in pain or fear and it sounds like someone is boiling a baby alive.

Rabbits are like popcorn shrimp in the animal kingdom, I have no idea how many dozens of the fuckers I've thrown to snakes over the years. And contrary to belief they aren't very sympathetic creatures. They're dumb as a rock.

# ¿ Dec 7, 2012 00:22

SilentD: Aug 22, 2012; by toby

Schlieren posted:

I've owned rabbits and they all had distinct personalities and capabilities. I'm shocked, however, that someone who fed them to their pet reptile otherized the entire species. Shocked I tell you

I can't really "otherize" rabbits as I am not a rabbit, this is common sense.

Just about everything in the wild eats rabbits, not just snakes, if you have a dog or a cat watch what they do when they catch one. I preferred to kill them myself (less screaming for the neighbors to get all snappy about) but some snakes won't eat dead animals, in which case nature has to take it's course.

And out of all the myriad of animals I've feed to snakes (mice, rats, chickens, rabbits, and the occasional animal they snagged on their own) the only ones dumber than the rabbits were the chickens.

I've had pet rats that I enjoyed and had fun with, doesn't mean I feel anything throwing rats to snakes. Snakes gotta eat.

# ¿ Dec 7, 2012 00:48

SilentD: Aug 22, 2012; by toby

Emanuel Collective posted:

With Morsy going full Mubarak and Tunisia still dealing with unrest between leftists and Islamists, does that mean Libya currently has the brightest outlook of all the Arab Spring countries? Who would've guessed that a year ago?

Libya had race based violence against Africans from Arabs, that's hardly a great thing. Furthermore a lot of the fighters and weapons are now in other African nations causing even more violence.

I'm not sure if that's better than what's going on in Egypt.

# ¿ Dec 7, 2012 02:01

SilentD: Aug 22, 2012; by toby

Muffiner posted:

Its the police academy, and the rocket is a Konkurs

Regimes in the region have a history of lacing their tear gas with delicious condiments like Chlorine gas. Back during the Yemeni Revolution, there were a lot of cases where people would asphyxiate and/or suffer muscle spasms from gas grenades which were identified by the protesters pretty quickly. Maybe it is that stuff all over again?
The Revolution in Egypt was only 18 days, although watching it happen it did feel like months were going by each day due to the amount of stuff that would happen every hour.

You know there are different grades of tear gas right? You know tear gas can be dangerous right? It's less than lethal, like rubber bullets and tasers, it can do serious damage or even kill. The types of tear gas the military has are not the laughable crap they lobbed at the OWS protestors.

I wouldn't past them to lace the gas, but it's quite plausible they trotted out the the good stuff instead of the half rear end crap we lob at people who don't shower and ruin public parks here.

# ¿ Dec 26, 2012 16:33

SilentD: Aug 22, 2012; by toby

Lascivious Sloth posted:

And Iranians claim they won. The war was pure pointless carnage. The war was pointless for the people, but it helped the current Iranian regime secure its power just like they use the sanctions and Israel as a diversion now. Iran threw their Hazara populace up as a meat shield and they were hailed as heroes yet to this day they are second class citizens and non-citizens. Basically, the Iranian government and religious theocracy in power is evil.

I'd say given who was backing who and external interference into the conflict they kinda did. If you repel an invasion and regain all your territory despite the invading force being backed by other large powers that's kinda a win. Outside of modern weapons being vastly more lethal it's not that far off from other conflicts. Kicking out an invading army with no less of territory is a win.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2013 09:38

SilentD: Aug 22, 2012; by toby

Eej posted:

Not only that but both countries used their trump cards: Iranian human wave attacks and Iraqi chemical weapons. I don't think you can really declare anyone a winner in that kind of a situation.

Morally, yeah sure. But Iraq started the mess and Iran managed to kick them out and regain their territory. That is a military victory on the strategic level.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2013 11:26

SilentD: Aug 22, 2012; by toby

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/ahmadinejad-image-hug-chavez-mother-photoshop-133036230.html

It's a pretty funny read all things involved, doubly so because of Iran's history of photoshop fiascos.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2013 19:03

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 18:00

SilentD: Aug 22, 2012; by toby

Fader Movitz posted:

I'm going to guess that VG (the paper) didn't care if it was true or not that they were real russian forces because someone fighting Spetznaz is going to sell papers. Another weird thing is that he was supposed to have been the commander of a Scandinavian battalion. While there certainly are Scandinavians fighting for the rebels, it seems highly unlikely that there would be more than a couple dozen actively participating in the fighting.

edit: spelling

They wouldn't even know it's Spetznaz. It's not like they'd be wearing zippy Russian uniforms there if they are there, and it's not like they wear unit identifiers to start with. There are certainly Russian people there, and techs for the gear they sold them. But that sounds like bullshit. And if those clowns did actually execute Spetznaz things would get a lot worse fast, and that's not the type of unit that people with no experience can just take the gently caress on.

# ¿ Jun 7, 2013 08:21

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