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How the Arab World Came Apart

nytimes.com

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Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#221

Post by gkfasdfasdf »

hacker42 wrote: post #19
not_a_terrorist wrote: post #7

tl:dr 100 pages: 1) People are fucking poor and hungry (extreme wealth inequalities) 2) Salafi/Wahhabi (Saudi) funding of islamism 3) Antediluvian hatred between people (it goes, way, way, way farther back than Sykes-Picot)

It seems they are missing an important factor, namely 4) the personal, cultural and economical impairment due to the religion of Islam. Nobody has time to thrive when they have to pray five times a day, when almost every thought and action is dictated by an old book and when half of their human potential is hidden in cloth bags.

You could not be more wrong. I am a software engineer, and I pray five times a day. My wife is a physician, prays five times a day, and wears the headscarf. If our household income is any indication, we are thriving just fine.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#222

Post by tim333 »

pdabbadabba wrote: post #205
tim333 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not so sure about that - the war was mostly Russia and Iran backing Assad against Turkey and the US backing the anti Assad rebels. Now Assad and Erdogan are buddies things may settle down with Assad, Putin and Erdogan all being presidents for life with questionable elections and the US not able to do a lot about it.

So your position is that if the U.S. would just butt out, ISIS and other anti-Assad rebels would just pack it up and go home? That seems unlikely.

No, that Assad and Russia would defeat them militarily.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#223

Post by Cyph0n »

gotchange wrote: post #177
return0 wrote: post #38

Long piece , but it fails in that it does not give a coherent message. Pieces of stories here and there are not history. First of all , lets stop calling it Arab Spring. If anything it's the arab Autumn of civil wars, where all arabs are united only in their resentment of the west. Secondly, let's talk about people, their souls, aspirations, and culture instead of political history. Given that these states were built…

> "where all arabs are united only in their resentment of the west" Is that how you view the political movements happening in the Arabic-speaking majority world - Sorry for the pedantry - from 2011 onward that we're consumed by resentment toward the West? It's gotta be about you, right? > "The arab world has always been far too divided to able to draw clear borders around their states" I had no idea that these politi…

Dude don't waste your time on OP. He clearly has no idea what he's talking about.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#225

Post by cafard »

stronglikedan wrote: post #210
anonymousab wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the eyes of a considerable many, voting for anyone else is the same as a vote for Trump. Maybe it has always been this way.

In the eyes of supporters of either major party, a vote for a third party is a vote for the other major party. It may not have always been this way, but it has for as long as I've been an engaged voter (~20 years).

It depends on who the third party is.

More from Republicans: Theodore Roosevelt, probably George Wallace and Ross Perot

More from Democrats: Henry Wallace, Strom Thurmond, Ralph Nader

Who knows: John Anderson.

I think that Roosevelt, Perot, and Nader all had strong effects, I don't think that Thurmond, either Wallace, or Anderson changed the outcome.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#227

Post by 6stringmerc »

How did it come apart? Almost exactly like Dick Cheney thought it would 20 years before cheering for the invasion. From an episode of Meet The Press in 2014[1]:

CHUCK TODD:

All right, let me ask you a couple of quick questions. I want to play for you an interesting clip of you 20 years ago about Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Take a look.

DICK CHENEY (ON TAPE):

That's a very volatile part of the world. And if you take down the central government in Iraq you can easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off. Part of it the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of Eastern Iraq the Iranians would like to claim, fought over for eight years. In the north you've got the Kurds. And the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey. It's a quagmire if you go that far.

[1] http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-transcript-...

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#228

Post by dragonwriter »

tim333 wrote: post #186
pdabbadabba wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, unlike Iraq in 2003, there will be a war in Syria 12 months from now whether Hillary tries to remove Assad or not. The question is whether we continue to try to shape the outcome. In the meantime, we have this: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/02/toxic-gas-in-the-...

Not so sure about that - the war was mostly Russia and Iran backing Assad against Turkey and the US backing the anti Assad rebels. Now Assad and Erdogan are buddies things may settle down with Assad, Putin and Erdogan all being presidents for life with questionable elections and the US not able to do a lot about it.

> Not so sure about that - the war was mostly Russia and Iran backing Assad against Turkey and the US backing the anti Assad rebels.

The series of wars in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq involve a lot more than that, and a Turkey-Syria-Russia alignment doesn't remove the basis for them (though it might reduce the level of violence in Syria while increasing it in Iraq, particularly Iraqi Kurdistan (and even moreso ex-Iraqi Kurdistan if the movement of that region to secede from Iraq progresses.)

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#229

Post by maxmax »

ekianjo wrote: post #104
cstross wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the best thing that could happen to them. ... In the long term. In the short term, it's going to be very, very bad for them indeed, as the sole source of foreign exchange goes away and the ordinary folks find themselves abandoned in a climate-change-drought-crippled land that has become populated well above its agricultural carrying capacity, and the elite jets off to enjoy their stolen wealth in Switzerland.

> In the short term, it's going to be very, very bad for them indeed It's not like they would not see it coming. Petrol is eventually going to become too expensive at some point, and they should invest accordingly. But numerous past examples of countries relying on raw resources have shown they usually don't adapt and plan, so I don't have too much hope in their case either.

That the problem is foreseeable doesn't make it less tragic.
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