Syria

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Chad
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Re: Syria

Post by Chad »

Shouldn't have broken my new rule.


Chad
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Re: Syria

Post by Chad »

Yeah, our default should be to not intervene without a really obvious provable reason. The most glaring example is invading Afghanistan and Iraq. Afghanistan was provably supporting and housing the organization that performed 9/11. The evidence that Iraq had WMDs was shaky at best and much of it could be dispelled even outside of the intel communities before the war started.

The one thing I want to point out about the article is that the following statement isn't exactly correct:
American fears about Iraqi ABCs – atomic, biological, and chemical weapons – rang his message sweeter to Washington. Looking to their own careers, CIA officials funnelled intelligence reports they knew would be prefered by the High Command rather than those undermining the public narrative of state sponsorship of terrorism and WMDs.
For the most part, the CIA officials who did this were the political appointed officials, not the career CIA analysts. The statements wording kind of suggests the real CIA personnel fudged their analysis when they didn't. This is careless. (Not your fault)

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Ego
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Re: Syria

Post by Ego »

Amid the Covid-19 distraction Turkey announced today that they will open the Syrian border and allow refugees to rush toward Europe. This is shaping up to be a very messy spring.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/turk ... lled-Idlib

What is Erdogan's goal?

Campitor
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Re: Syria

Post by Campitor »

@Ego

Erdogan's goal is to have other countries deal with the refugee problem. Turkey, being next to a destabilized region, is probably experiencing issues with such a large influx of refugees. Even if there are no cultural clashes, the economic cost of so many refugees has to be impacting the Turkish economy.

jacob
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Re: Syria

Post by jacob »

The more direct goal is to avoid EU sanctions due to Turkish military engagements by threatening to release refugees into Europe. It's a replay of 2015. This would allow Turkey to continue [the war efforts] and grow its influence in the region. After the US left/lost influence, there's a bit of a power vacuum being contested by Turkey, Russia, and the existing nations/borderlines (as favored by Europe).

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Jean
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Re: Syria

Post by Jean »

Erdogan stated several Times that his end goal is to invade europe. He recently claimed a huge portion of the greek maritime territory. He is not the only one creating mess in the middle east and using it against Europe.

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Ego
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Re: Syria

Post by Ego »

Right now Russia has a unique opportunity to engineer dramatic power shifts as we are otherwise distracted and their guy in the White House is still firmly in place and reluctant to respond.

Turkey is on the verge of open conflict with Russia after their 33 soldiers were killed in Syria by what many believe were Russian airstrikes. The Russians refused to allow the Turks heloevac of the wounded and forced a road retreat through hostile territory. The open border threat is a sign of just how desperate Turkey, or better yet Erdogan, is to get NATO's help.

The Turks are busing and boating refugees from Syria to Europe at this moment. Northern Syria has the potential to unleash four million refugees on Europe. This will not go well.

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TheWanderingScholar
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Re: Syria

Post by TheWanderingScholar »

Between this and Turkey starting to get involved in Libya against Haftar, who is backed by Russia, really makes me scratch my head as to what they are trying to do. Because to me, it seems to be not working.

Riggerjack
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Re: Syria

Post by Riggerjack »


Erdogan stated several Times that his end goal is to invade europe. He recently claimed a huge portion of the greek maritime territory.
The Turkish/Greek border has been in flux for millennia. This conflict started at spearpoint, and won't be settled in our lifetimes. But it inspires some fun movies, like 300.

ertyu
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Re: Syria

Post by ertyu »

Clashes at the greek border on the news today - migrants trying to cut and storm the fence, local forces using water hoses and the like to hold them back :/

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Jean
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Re: Syria

Post by Jean »

Genghis khan, ceasar, muhamad, napoleon were all just migrants.

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Jean
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Re: Syria

Post by Jean »

Riggerjack wrote:
Mon Mar 02, 2020 12:49 pm
The Turkish/Greek border has been in flux for millennia. This conflict started at spearpoint, and won't be settled in our lifetimes. But it inspires some fun movies, like 300.
Well, in that case a proper answer is total anhilation of the ennemy.

Riggerjack
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Re: Syria

Post by Riggerjack »

Well, that's certainly one answer.

Myself, I think trying something new and different would be more likely to get a new/different result.

But doubling down on solutions that have consistently failed is usually pretty popular... :roll:

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Jean
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Re: Syria

Post by Jean »

There is a survivor bias in your assumptions, but this time, it's only failed attempts that survived.

Riggerjack
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Re: Syria

Post by Riggerjack »

This is a war that went on for millennia, but it hasn't been constant. There have been many times when people were busy doing other things. Only those currently living survived. And they, not for long, on this scale.

But I wonder what the ratio of those who didn't experience war was to those who did. And which was more satisfied with the life they lead.

Jean, you tend to frame everything as conflict. This is an emotionally satisfying framework. It makes all that one does important.

But that doesn't mean that the only option is conflict. It simply excludes other options.

This is common over here in the "fight them over there, or fight them over here" mantras. This way of looking at the situation simply excludes the options that don't involve fighting.

That doesn't mean those options don't exist, just that one doesn't like to think about them.

Or, you could try to be brave enough to free your mind.

I have no doubt you are a badass. But in every way that we excel, there is a way that we are weak. Confidence comes more easily from eliminating our weaknesses than building our strengths.

Which options are you excluding? What does accepting those limits cost you? Why would someone so comfortable living a life he has chosen for himself, comfortable with accepting these limits?

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Jean
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Re: Syria

Post by Jean »

When people are trying to forcefully impose their will unto you, the conflict is there, wheter you want it or not. The options that don't involve fighting are either fleeing, or giving in. Fleeing requires space, which we don't have, giving in is a suicide. Either as an individual, or as a group. It's not freedom to stop caring about anything and accepting the death of everything you are and inherited, that's just death. Total Death. Christianity is just another suicide sect. There is no freedom without life, or without future.
Unless you are talking about convincing them to stop? Well, this has been tryed, it doesn't work. It only work temporarily, which leads to that you get to have to fight again later. You can frame it the other way around in that you fight until you get to convince them to stop, which gets you a few years of non fighting.
Knowing wether it's time to fight or not is like walking on a ridge with a hard fall on both sides. Today turkey is pushing, and i think it's time to push back. It's not like they are at the other side of the planet, it's one day of driving away. Peoples that want to destroy you are all more than an ocean away. That's a different situation.

Riggerjack
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Re: Syria

Post by Riggerjack »

When people are trying to forcefully impose their will unto you, the conflict is there, wheter you want it or not.
Perhaps I have misread the situation. Tell me more about how this has happened to you.

You are right, I have an insulating ocean, and thousands of miles of land as well. This may give me a different perspective.

While we have plenty of Pakistanis here, we have more Indians, and while neither seems comfortable with the other, tensions don't seem so bad, locally.

What's it like for you? Who is causing you distress, and how?

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Jean
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Re: Syria

Post by Jean »

We have entire cities where Sharia is becoming the law. Peoples have to move out of certain areas beacause they don't belong to the right ethninc group. The level of violence inside our society is steadily increasing. Infrastructures are becoming overloaded. This is even becoming true in small villages. They are tacking sovereignty over part of territory where we used to have freedom of movement, and are planning to expand to territories.
Maybe it all sounds normal in north america, the key difference is that we cannot just leave those situations happen where they are happening, because we can't buy a few acres for a few thousands $ in a place where those problem will only happen in decades. We are already an ethnic minority in the combat aged man demographic in a few countries. I'm not enthousiastic about taking a chance at seeing if they are going to stop wanting to kill us when they'll feel the land is theirs.
If I was a badass, I'de be excited about having to hide in the woods, attacking their cities like a werewolf, but I just want to be a dad that doesn't have to follow his children everywhere until they can fight or marry someone that can follow them everywhere and fight for them.

Riggerjack
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Re: Syria

Post by Riggerjack »

Ok. If that's the situation, and I am not disputing this, what is your solution?

Because after the fall of the ottoman empire, many countries have had some situation like this. You have lots of examples to look at. What does success look like to you? Which ones were successful in your eyes?

Because from here, I can see that there are a lot of active conflicts in the world, and most of them involve at least one Islamic faction. And plenty of former war zones. And none of them look like a place one can "be a dad that doesn't have to follow his children everywhere". None of these places seems as nice as present day Switzerland. None of them look like an improvement on your current situation.

From here, your proposed solutions seem to exclude your goal in every case. So have I missed something? Is there an example of success I'm not considering?

Or are you stacking rocks and pretending to be digging a well?

Going back to the military, what happened to the guy who understood that surprise is a vital aspect of strategy, so then proposed "We need to do a daylight charge over the minefield, into the machine gun nests! They'll never see it coming!" If he was a private in peacetime, he was told to shut up and ignored. If an officer in wartime, he catches friendly fire.

Fighting the immigrants within your borders is such a weak-minded strategy, people stop talking when you bring it up. It's embarrassing. You may as well be talking about charging tanks on horseback.

I think the immigrant situation your country is facing is far more serious than you are taking it.

You should give this more thought.

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