Czar Vlad the Self Important has a track record that fits the old saying ‘when your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail’. That’s exactly his history; from smashing Grozny right through to today when it’s Libya’s 2nd turn.
The first go-round in Libya was over these last 4 years and was much like his first go in Syria. In Syria it was all behind the scenes support of a very long term Russian ally (that bought lots of weapons and hosted russia’s only mediteranian naval facility) and so it has been with Haftar the anti democratic military thug vying for control of Libya.
Now we are informed in the MSM that 1,000 ‘private mercenary’ russian special forces are deployed in Libya. They are the ‘plausibly deniable’ troops that the russian’s put first into almost any conflict and just the other day they have been denied by Putin. Call me a cynic but I think if Putin says they are not there we can safely assume they are!
Just recall the hundreds of Russians that the US air force killed in Syria back in February 2018. They had crossed the Euphrates heading towards the north eastern oil fields. A blatant effort to test US resolve over a deconfliction line – being that very river. Big mistake for them, but not for Vlad who had just used them for his test of the US. https://www.newsweek.com/euphrates-massacre-200-russians-left-dead-proxy-battle-us-806798 Putin could just shrug his shoulders and explain it away as nothing to do with him! Because, he explained, it was just some foolish contractors off on a spree, he thus didn’t have to respond in any manner that was face saving or showed strength of leadership. He didn’t have to react and take any action that perhaps could be dumb and escalate events in an uncontroled manner. He didn’t have to take any action at all. This method allows Putin to shug his ‘powerful russian shoulders’ and then bide his time for doing something else where and when new opportunities present; and to be sure, they will present soon enough in this region.
The trouble with all this democracy stuff is that if people support democratic transformation of the world there are deadly consequences to face. Nothing this good comes for free as the saying goes. If elections are enabled then conservatives will come to power where they have mass support and in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) that will result in Islamists coming to power! Erdogan is exactly a case in point! Morsi was another such case and so is the situation in Libya. The people of the region are as religious (and more so) than were Australians prior to WW1. There is nothing surprising about who they will vote for.
The struggle for first stage democracy is the struggle for elections that will elect the Islamists and some of them may even then turn into or out to be islamofascists. That can’t be helped if you are a democrat. Struggle within the ranks of the believers is the only way to move forward as we have seen with our own western history. There is no skipping of stages and modernity being dropped on the world without the struggle being among the people themselves. No liberal democrat can prevent a conservative from winning an election by refusing to hold them.
Here we are at the close of 2019 and the glaring reality of the modern western world is that the policies of the pseudoleft are as anti democratic as any open right winger in the US foreign policy establishment. They would rather the elections weren’t held in the MENA rather than accept that Islamists will win them because they currently have the support of the masses. Consider how Tony Abbott was quite happy to see Sisi overthrow Morsi the islamist on 3/07/13! Given the context of the Syrian slaughter that was then underway, a more pathetic demonstration that open conservatives had learned as little about the world as had their pseudoleftist mirror images is hard to imagine.
The pseudoleft and ‘realist’ right both hold the masses in contempt. They share a view of the war that was launched to specifically liberate the Iraqi masses. The pseudoleft and open rightists say it was the war against Iraq! They even think that it must have been for oil and has thus failed because the Iraqi people still control the oil. They say it was a disaster and even that it was a mistake! But while these ‘lefts’ and open rights are in fierce agreement nevertheless they both know the liberation can not be undone by them. They know the revolution no matter how backward this society is, is off and running and not just for Iraq but well beyond. The Iraqi masses are now engaged and working through the political and economic struggles that can’t just disappear because people have a right to vote and form political parties and own and run news services, news-papers TV and radio stations and make quite humble blog posts etc. The terror regime was over time smashed! The mechanized army was smashed quickly. The underground baathist army has had revolutionary war fall on it! Baathists fight now off the back foot and democrats are in the ascendant position. This is the horror that Baathists face! They are the hunted they are the desperate ones they are the doomed. The Iraqi masses now have the opportunity to advance to our (pathetic) western standards!
Now what about Libya?
As we see yet again Erdogan is at the center of the struggle for democracy in the MENA! Right now he is about to deploy more troops (there are already Turkish troops deployed) to Libya and naturally, the Pseudos don’t know what to think. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/12/turkey-erdogan-surprise-visit-tunisia-discuss-libya-191225152224537.html
In Syria Putin and Assad are bombing the hell out of Idlib yet again and thousands of more refugees are being forced out to seek shelter in Turkey. All is doom and gloom and ‘the war is lost’ for some commentators but Turkey keeps putting in Troops and backing the SNA and protecting civilians.
So from my POV even with the people of Idlib still being turned into refugees by the tens of thousands and the country into rubble BUT because they now own their own Syrian National Army and with Turkish assistance, and that’s been growing by the month, the war is not lost. Civilian refugees flow out and revolutionary soldiers NOW flow back thanks to Turkey!
Hopefully, the PKK leadership will come to their senses in 2020. Hopefully, they will resume the peace process with the democratic Turkish government because they have an available peaceful path forward with a more than credible, a solid partner for peace in Erdogan.
The PKK can through democratic negotiations obtain a workable peace and solution to their outstanding issues. Those issues are not clear to me at this stage and might be very hard to formulate now but that is the whole point! They have no right to some kind of independent enclave in Syrian territory. They have much more of a right to a separate territory in Turkey and they are NOT going to get that without a collapse of Turkey in the same way that they secured territory in Syria AND Turkey will not collapse any time soon! The Kurdish people are not synonymous with the PKK and the people have an interest in peace and democracy. If the PKK doesn’t negotiate for peace at this point they will just end up with more Turkish and SNA troops down the track and still have to negotiate. Millions of refugees in Turkey are the unarmed masses from where a people’s army will emerge. They are not going away and they are not going to be yet another Palestinian style problem.
If a deal sensibly did come about then the PKK Syrian troops could be incorporated into the SNA. We can’t hold our breath on that though. But the very first stage of this return to peace will have to be to withdraw from west of the Euphrates because it simply is not Kurdish territory in any sense at all and the SDF formula is not a credible workaround for this obvious Kurdish control over Arab territory.
The SNA must come to control Manbij if there is to be progress for the democratic forces. Kurds only ever were 10% of Syria and the PKK a small fraction of that so rather than resorting to further cooperation with Assad and Putin etc they ought to throw in their lot with the SNA. There is NO sign of this yet unfortunately, so tragically more fighting will resolve the issues and the needless deaths of very good young Kurdish soldiers will result. I blame the leadership of the PKK for this overplaying of their hand.
Now that Turkey has stepped in to assist Libya I am convinced Putin will not win in Libya.
Merry Christmas to all who value truth and who don’t just want to fight fascists and all anti-democrats but want to win! The signs are good for progress in 2020.
Both in Syria and Libya Erdogan is standing against the anti-democrats while the PKK is still not withdrawn from West of the Euphrates and IS still working with Assad and Russia. This is very bad policy if people are interested in furthering the Democratic revolution in Syria!
Hey, Steve take a look in this mirror. Look what western meddling has led to. https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/how-wests-war-libya-has-spurred-terrorism-14-countries
Or is it just that our ½ arsed bunglers, right across the western world, have just dropped the ball? Did they fail to follow through with an even deeper commitment to the protracted struggle for democracy in this ‘formerly stable’ now unexplainably god-pestering section of the swamp?
Will Erdogan drop the ball or does he understand the difference between Islamist and Islamofascist?
This junk could have been written by David Kilcullen!
Apparently, Gaddafi ought to have been left alone to slaughter the revolutionaries and crush the revolution; don’t we know a disaster has unfolded because the west crushed the tyranny instead. Gaddafi ought to have been permitted to do in Libya what Assad has done in Syria. That is, get whatever backing is required, from wherever is required, to kill, ad-infinitum, his democracy-seeking people. All done, just to keep his tyranny going, ad-infinitum. And this keeps being done so that the west might be safe from terror, ad-infinitum!
Just forget about 9/11 and war. Forget all the rest of the pre-2011 Arab Spring events and then substitute Iraq (as an ‘unwinnable disaster’ and you get exactly the same tosh.
I wonder; who will be casting a longing look back towards that now distant past way up on that wobbly old fence? But there was a reason to climb down back then and there is not now a reason to run back to try and climb back up! https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/haftars-war-aims-return-libya-military-dictatorship-he-must-be-stopped
Its not politically correct but it is true, Iraq was a better place under Saddam. As they say before the American invasion we had one Saddam now we have a thousand.
The US really fucked up Libya. They received UN approval to protect people in Benghazi. They then turned this approval into using NATO air power to over throw the regimen which I was critical of only in retrospect and this is because for some reason after having established a UN recognised government they just left it to its fate.
In invading Iraq the US invaded the wrong country there is a country that is fucking the world up and that country is Saudi Arabia.
Look at Al Qaeda it was inspired and financed with Saudi dollars as was Boko Haram, Al Shabaab and the Taliban. Islamic State sharia law was indistinguishable from Saudi sharia law.
And now Saudi Arabia backs the Libyan warlord and US citizen Khalifa Belqasim Hafter who spent 2 decades with the CIA at Langley.
But still if you want to potter around the edges support this or that middle east strong man, over throw this or that middle east strong man go ahead but the elephant in the room is the House of Saud.
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/heres-what-life-in-iraq-was-like-under-saddam-hussein-2014-7?r=US&IR=T
Steve I can’t tell the difference between you and the classic realist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrE_RPNogG4
Oct 11, 2018
Professor John Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, spoke at the Bush School of Government and Public Service on his book, “The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities.”
It would be worth you slowly ticking and crossing off on the points that he systematically explains (I found it managable listening at 1.75, bit slow otherwise).
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/betweenthelines/one-month-after-the-unlosable-election-and-why-we-no-longer-ne/11804562 I was also listening to Tom Switzer today https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrE_RPNogG4 and his views and your own just seem to gel; and then there is your sympathy with David Kilcullen’s analysis and now what you have just posted as a reply over Libya… well, to be frank, I think you ought to pull it all together and try to set down what you actually do think. They have done a lot of the spade work for you as far as I can see and I would be interested in where you think you really differ.
I am not a realist in the sense that Mr Mearsheimer characterises it. I do think that he is correct to describe the battle for ideas within the US foreign policy circles as being between that of Realism and Liberal hegemony and as for Iraq the Realist school was proved correct as Iraq turned out to be a failure. It is hard to believe that anyone needs convincing of the failed nature of the Iraq experiment. At the time I argued to you that Iraq would come to resemble Somalia and that invasion would hand influence over to Iran. If you were in Mosul of late well may you envy those people of Mogadishu and if you are one of the people who have been ethnically cleansed moving to Somalia might not seem such a step down. As we see the forces of the government turn its rifles on the large protest movement that is against Iranian influence and for the provision of basic services that the government has yet to come good with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Iraqi_protests
I disagree with Mr Mearshiemer on several important points. One he is arguing about whats the best outcome for the US nation state. I didnt enter this argument with maintaining US interests as my focus. He also argues that the invasion of Iraq was doomed because of Iraqi nationalism and I disagree I have argued for many years that bring democracy to Iraq was possible but only if the US was prepared to follow the model it used in post war Germany and post war Japan and that would mean massive investment of resources rather than the stupid stuff that came out of the White House remember “the war will pay for itself”, “We will be greeted as liberators”, “It will be a cake walk”
First up US military was asking for 400,000 troops but Rumsfeld scoffed at this and provided 100,000. Prior to the occupation of Japan officers were given intensive lessons in speaking Japanese remember in Iraq the resistance could put up signs warning the locals where IED’s were placed and the US military had no idea. In the Pacific arena the Imperial Army of Japan upon Japanese surrender was ordered to stay at their posts and maintain order until relieved. In Germany and Japan hell in Italy even the anti fascist partisans were relieved of their weapons, remember the fuss in Iraq when the US ordered that each house hold could only have one AK47 and Iraqis went crazy arguing that they needed one for the house and one for the car because you couldnt expect the school run to be done without a gun and if you put the only gun in the car then bad elements would target your house.
In post war Germany it took 2 weeks before occupation troops were as safe walking the streets of Germany as they were walking the streets back home.
Now thats the dilemma the US could succeed if they were prepared to pay the price. They wernt prepared to pay the price so they couldnt succeed.
BTW I came across some interesting stuff looking at US troops and their thoughts about occupation looking at contemporary letters and diaries. Turns out GI Joe didnt like the French but found the Germans to be their kind of people. US troops were under orders to treat the Germans as a defeated guilty people and had a no fraternization policy which lasted about a nano second.
Or maybe as Joseph Heller realised “Adolf Hitler, who had done such a great job of combating un-American activities in Germany.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22
Just back to Libya I support Turkey sending troops to defend the Libyan government I also think that Turkey has done well sending aid to Somalia and Turkey has been great in its response to Syrian refugees but that doesnt stop me from saying that Turkey’s treatment of the Kurds is abysmal. Free Abdullah Ocalan now!
US ambassador leaves Baghdad as crowds attempt to storm US embassy and please dont tell me that things are going as planned
https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Pro-Iranian-protesters-target-US-embassy-in-Iraq-ambassador-evacuated-612650
It is 11years since the election of Obama/Trump so nothing is going to any ‘plan’ that I would have outlined. But everyone knows that if the west and Turkey had it all over again they would never ever have let Putin into Syria and would have gone to war to rid Syria of Assad in good time when people like me and Arthur were telling them to get on with it!
The return of the realists and some of their rotten policies has been very bad for the revolution that is now part of the furniture of the region. It’s now standard practice for western troops to engage in the ongoing military involvement to fight Islamofascism and so they will get better at it. But not with realist sell outs like Swizer and Kilcullen.
I would rather they had not started to go weak at the knees as GWB himself did in his 2nd term. But what do you expect? There is only 1 step worse than the path they have been on and that would be the path the pseudoleft ‘peace’ movement wanted them on.
Glad you support Erdogan the democratically elected Islamist leader of Turkey as he is militarily defending the Democratic Islamists of Libya. And you have noticed the assist to Somalia. As for the millions of Syrians he is directly responsible for just remember he is helping them build their own SNA and without that army the people would have nothing.
I hope the PKK returns to the path of peace that they were on before the Syrian disaster changed their calculations. I hope they stop uniting with Assad and his mates. Those wonderful young Kurdish soldiers could well be inducted into the SNA rather than be any fight between the 2. Turkey has been extraordinarily patient but the PKK continued to try to create an enclave rather than be a 10% part of the Syrian democratic revolution!
Patrick I want to know where you stand on the Iraq failed experiment debate.
Success for the experiment would be the dictator replaced by a government that was democratic and functional to the point that it would inspire its neighbors to adopt a similar format.
Failure in the experiment would be indicated if say the second largest city was reduced to rubble after having been conquered by a terrorist group that owed its very existence to that experiment.
Failure in the experiment would be indicated by the country experiencing widespread ethnic cleansing which it has.
Failure for the experiment would be indicated if the government wasnt able to offer the people basic amenities like electricity, running drinkable water or jobs.
Failure in the experiment would be indicated if a neighboring country such as Iran wielded great power say by maintaining Iranian controlled militias which it does.
Failure for the experiment would be indicated if say the population instead of being grateful attempted to storm the US embassy in an attempt to tear the ambassador limb from limb.
So it should be easy to agree that the experiment has failed. The next question is why, is it as I have argued that the USA just didnt do enough or is it that the experiment was doomed to failure because it just wasnt doable.
Now I have some leaning towards the not doable position in that 2 leading figures post invasion to gain prominence were Sistani and Sadr. One famously refusing to open a letter from Bush and the other leading an army against the forces of occupation. Now before the invasion I had never heard of either which just speaks to my ignorance about Iraq but the US must have known how key these figures would become. So why go ahead if you could already pick that these leading figures would at a minimum not co operate?
Maybe I spoke too soon maybe you still think the the Iraq experiment was a success.
US State department advises all US citizens to leave Iraq.
https://www.eurasiareview.com/04012020-us-latest-bombing-shows-us-lost-iraq-war-oped/
Baathists still run a largish mechanized army in a large part of Syria they don’t in Iraq! There they were reduced to a rump insurgency.
How goes the struggle for democracy in Syria? Did the failure to take action and let Vlad the audacious use his hammers encourage him to smash up Ukraine even more than he had! Back in 2014 all manner of ‘leftists’ were shrugging their shoulders over what had to be done in both of these cases!
I thought that silence would descend on the anticommunists! Not long now till it will be sell-out time for the Ukrainians! The open rightists will be more inclined to stay the course than refugees from a long dead peace movement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pJ4JIoGnzc this is the basic logic of why the war must go on till Victory.
Anders Puck Neilsen
Jun 17, 2023
Russia’s demands for a peace deal will be totally unrealistic, so it is hard to see how the war can end as long as Putin is president in Russia.
0:00 Intro
0:26 Peace is not an option for Ukraine
1:47 Russian demands for peace
2:06 Annexed territories
4:01 Prosecution of war crimes
4:54 Reparations
5:35 Putin can’t stop the war
Ukraine is now moving into a very threatening position that will sooner or later cut off large numbers of troops that will be attempting to bolt for home or alternatively surrender and at that point the balance of forces that currently appears to be the case will reveal itself as an illusion on the way to a slower or faster defeat for Russia, no matter what costs are extracted by the fascist aggressor troops.