David Cameron said on Sunday that Vladimir Putin’s decision to take military action in Syria was a ‘terrible mistake’. 4-10-2015
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not so long ago it was
- Remove Assad
- Find someone else capable of winning. Help them.
The “Help them” of the former plan is (arguable, I know) one of the main armament sources that are the reason why 1. in the current plan happened.
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and it was, because Putin is supporting a despotic ruler who is responsible for the vast majority of civilian deaths in the conflict so far.
“Remove Assad” is still the main objective. The purpose of the Vienna talks currently underway is to institute a cease fire first of all, followed by a transfer of power to a transitional government and then elections.
A third round of the talks? I was only aware of the two meetings in October and mid-November.
that’s all that’s happened so far, they agreed the broad outlines of the cease fire and the transition at the last one.
the opposition forces are meeting in Saudi soon as well, important that they’re all on the same page if they’re to be an effective anti-ISIS force.
ah, okay. It seems I misunderstood “currently underway”.
I’m not sure the results of the talks are valid anymore, afaik Iran didn’t participate and the pissing contest between Erdogan and Putin shuffled the cards - and NATO’s decision to invite Montenegro is probably not helping.
yeah, it’s a messy situation. russia’s intervention has been the worst thing that could’ve happened.
Depends on the POV. The idea to remove Assad was imho never well thought-out and without a recognizable longterm strategy for Syria’s pupulation.
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being brutally slaughtered is not a good long term strategy for Syria’s population either.
I don’t have a solution for this, but the history of humanitarian regime change / peacekeeping missions is not a positive one.
The KFOR had a head count of 50k responsible for an area with less than 2m people (probably the highest ratio troops to population in any peacekeeping mission). They were not able to stop the atrocities in the aftermath of the Kosovo war.
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I don’t have a solution for this, but the history of humanitarian regime change / peacekeeping missions is not a positive one.
Which is probably why the coalition forces aren’t currently engaged in regime change.
The Daesh-controlled area has many characteristics of a nations state, calling the bombings a regime change attempt is not that misleading.
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It’s not an internationally recognised nation (not by a single country), the population are their prisoners, not citizens.
Like Taiwan! (ignoring a handful of American countries and the Vatican. but international recognition is not the most important attribute of a nation.)
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international recognition is not the most important attribute of a nation
No that would be self-determination, as recognised by the UN. Something which doesn’t hold either for ISIS.
The Kemalists have treated the Kurds just as badly as Erdoğan is now.
That’s too facile to even mean anything. Winning is reasonably well-defined when you line up for a field battle. Here you could be talking about anything – not letting them expand, or take over quite the whole world, or establish themselves as a permanent state, or manipulate western nations into escalating the conflict.
This is handing them that last one. Because the bombing itself has been something ISIS is trying to provoke, you know, and idiotic casual destruction is what created and maintains the shattered environment groups like them flourish in.
If we really have no ideas beyond “we can’t let them win whatever” it’s doomed and sure to be worse than nothing. I can’t say I have a lot of trust in this leadership, but I’d like to think someone has given the matter a little thought, and would like to know what it is. This isn’t even the minimum the Bush administration gave Iraq.
In the long run, yes. So long as this fight against ISIS is seen as a West vs Islam issue, it’s going to continue indefinitely. Also, Saudi Arabia has the most direct responsibility for the creation of ISIS, so maybe they should be doing more to combat it.
My point was that the countries you mention would be far less likely to care about civilian casualties than the coalition has been this time around. In terms of ground troops I think it’s a different question, and western forces (bar the occasional special ops mission) should be nowhere near the place.
