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How the Arab World Came Apart

nytimes.com

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Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#241

Post by dragonwriter »

brightball wrote: post #166
danielbln wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the choice is between war hawk and unpredictable megalomaniac. Sophie's choice of US politics...

And 3rd party. If there's ever a year where they gain traction, it's this year.

> And 3rd party. If there's ever a year where they gain traction, it's this year.

No, to all evidence, 1992 was a far stronger year for that; while things might change between now and November, for pretty much the entire election season then Perot alone was polling above the combined total (at the same point in the campaign) of all non-major-party candidates this year. (And, during the primary season, sometimes ahead of both of the major party frontrunners in head-to-head polls that year.)

In terms of the electoral votes, there's essentially no chance of a third party result this year more successful than 1836, 1892, or 1948, and little chance of either electoral or popular vote success of a third party candidate more than 1856 or 1924.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#242

Post by tdkl »

rm999 wrote: post #139
tdkl wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (sounds like somebody that's running for president this year) Someone else running for president this year has pledged that the first act of her address would be removing Assad. Which brings us back at the beginning of stupid actions.

Do you have a source? I just searched and see no such pledge. All I'm finding are vague statements from her allies and advisors that they think she'll prioritize Syria.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/29/hillary-clinton-w...

Just a reminder, this is the presidential candidate in question:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmIRYvJQeHM

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#243

Post by sn41 »

tdkl wrote: post #87
jcbeard wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The invasion of Iraq was stupid. It was likely illegal, based on false pretenses, and well....shouldn't have happened. The invasions initial execution was beautiful (first few days). The US Military performed splendidly. The follow through (driven by political leaders) was idiotic. Stupid decisions like not listening to his generals (Bush), disbanding the Iraqi security forces (Paul Bremer), and the odd focus on turn…

> (sounds like somebody that's running for president this year) Someone else running for president this year has pledged that the first act of her address would be removing Assad. Which brings us back at the beginning of stupid actions.

I wonder why people forget Libya. There's already a proven track record of bungling by this person. No one in the Pentagon wanted the war. Look at what is left of what in 2011 was Africa's wealthiest nation.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#244

Post by saiya-jin »

pjc50 wrote: post #136
intended wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> infrastructure for AC-based indoor living in the entire region and beyond Thats a huge amount of constant power and infrastructure, which is just not going to be built. Easier to build an underground city with high ceilings and taking advantage of physics than managing to give AC to everyone in the region, which is to say both options are extremely difficult and require pre-existing infrastructure. And this still d…

> underground city with high ceilings and taking advantage of physics Ancient Iranian architecture was quite close to that, which you may be alluding to: http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Architecture/wind.htm What people will do? Well, same as everywhere else, everything from agriculture to software. It's more a question of how many of them the local agriculture can support. The number of people who've fled Syria is mor…

saw those built in places like ancient city center of Yazd, they sure had the heating/cooling figured out. even saw a photo of ice storage building (looked a bit older). I mean, storing ice in the middle of the desert.

no wonder persians were called 'educated arabs' in the past.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#245

Post by metaphorm »

finid wrote: post #188
jcbeard wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The invasion of Iraq was stupid. It was likely illegal, based on false pretenses, and well....shouldn't have happened. The invasions initial execution was beautiful (first few days). The US Military performed splendidly. The follow through (driven by political leaders) was idiotic. Stupid decisions like not listening to his generals (Bush), disbanding the Iraqi security forces (Paul Bremer), and the odd focus on turn…

> The invasion of Iraq was stupid. It was likely illegal, I agree that the invasion was stupid, but it was not "likely illegal," it _was_ illegal.

it still amazes me that people argue that there is even such a thing as "legal" war. war is the breakdown of social order. law is only relevant in the presence of existing social order.

when a country like the U.S. chooses to initiate a war of aggression against a foreign population it is effectively just an assertion that there is no such thing as law when it comes to wielding geo-political power. in the case of the congressional vote to authorize force, that wasn't really an exercise of law. that was a public performance of assent to break the law. it was congress saying "we capitulate to your plans and will not attempt to interfere with the war".

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#246

Post by metaphorm »

bogomipz wrote: post #147

"The Arab World" - What does that even mean? Arab is a language distinction, a language of which there are many dialects. As Arabic is spoken from Western Sahara all the way east to Oman that pretty much disqualifies Arab World from having geographical significance. Arab also does not denote religious faith as there are Arab Jews, Arab Christians(Coptic) and of course Arab Muslims. There was once briefly a concept of…

are you actually confused about which people are being referred to though? seems like you're just getting pedantic here.

Every single country profiled in the piece is majority Arab (ethnically), majority Arab (linguistically), and majority Muslim (religiously).

what more meaningful distinction would you make that clarifies things? "Middle Eastern countries currently on fire"? They are certainly all countries that can be fairly described as Arab.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#247

Post by douche »

mytddu wrote: post #236
jcbeard wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The invasion of Iraq was stupid. It was likely illegal, based on false pretenses, and well....shouldn't have happened. The invasions initial execution was beautiful (first few days). The US Military performed splendidly. The follow through (driven by political leaders) was idiotic. Stupid decisions like not listening to his generals (Bush), disbanding the Iraqi security forces (Paul Bremer), and the odd focus on turn…

> The invasions initial execution was beautiful (first few days) The initial "Shock and Awe" campaign in Baghdad killed an estimated 6,600+ civilians. [1] It's stated purpose was to " impose this overwhelming level of Shock and Awe against an adversary on an immediate or sufficiently timely basis to paralyze its will to carry on ... [to] seize control of the environment and paralyze or so overload an adversary's perc…

That is an impressively small civilian death toll for a bombing campaign that entirely gutted the defense capabilities of a regional power.

That's basically a textbook example of how to surgically destroy your enemy's warmaking capabilities with the least loss of noncombatant life.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#248

Post by wbl »

acqq wrote: post #217
chishaku wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

State Department policy on Syria is regime change going back to at least 2011. The method/means is still fluid. See the article and State Department testimony below, emphasis mine. NYT, from 2013: "Last summer, as the fighting in Syria raged and questions about the United States’ inaction grew, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton conferred privately with David H. Petraeus, the director of the C.I.A. The two off…

> back to at least 2011. At least to 2006, ten years ago, thanks to the US Embassy cable published by Wikileaks: https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06DAMASCUS5399_a.html Some coverage: http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/10/wikileaks-cabl... "The cables also show that U.S. support for efforts to overthrow the Syrian government beginning in 2011 were not a response to the Assad government’s repression of protes…

Or you could look at the sanctions the US has had in place against Syria for years. That the US doesn't like Syria is well known.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#249

Post by pdabbadabba »

tim333 wrote: post #222
pdabbadabba wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe eventually. But that would require more war, would it not? My point was not that the war in Syria will never end, but that Syria will remain in a state of civil war for some time to come whether or not Hillary goes after Assad.

So the decision is not between war and peace in Syria. It is between one war and another. The alternative you describe might be shorter (or it might not be, depending on how Hillary would execute her plan to go after Assad, among numerous other factors), but it may also be worse in many other respects.

Re: How the Arab World Came Apart

#250

Post by mkaziz »

tdkl wrote: post #94
curiousgal wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Nobody has time to thrive when they have to prey five times a day Ah huh. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age

The classic "Golden age" deception. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_Qpy0mXg8Y

Funded by the CSPI, which has a major anti-Islam agenda.
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