The Alawites are Shi'ites? Really? They may be allied with them, but from what little I know, they have an esoteric, highly syncretic religion, sometimes dressed in islamic trappings.
Where is the left? We have all this tedious preening about MLK, and prattle about homosexual marriage. Meanwhile, in August (of course), 99 years after WWI started, mindless missile-rattling is consuming the world, and I haven't heard of so much as a picket line or a telephone tree.
Rand Paul has been way ahead on this issue, as far as I can see.
Brazil has the makings of a civil society. It remains to be seen whether family ties and political gangsterism (with pistol and with fountain pen) can be overcome.
It's a fascinating experiment (I love this kind of technology) , but whether solar-powered flight for masses of passengers will ever be practical remains to be seen. Wishing won't make it so.
There is a political problem with Keynesian policy. It is a lot easier to get governments to deficit spend in recessions, than to get them to run surpluses in times of prosperity, to damp the inflationary and speculative cycle. So the gummint runs deficits year in and year out, regardless of the economy.
Another illustration of why democracy is doomed to self-destruct. The majority tends to vote itself more and more goodies, until the whole system self-destructs. Then, of course, you get tyranny. Just ask Aristotle.
Obama may be a bit more cautious sometimes, and prefers bombs to boots on the ground. Liberal interventonism, however, is not really preferable to the more unilateralist style of the GOP.
We should abandon prattle about "human rights" and "democracy," in favor of a cautious reference to "national interest." 'Twould save us and the world a lot of lives, and us a lot of money.
An attack on an Embassy is an attack on our territory, and on conventions necessary for international relations. I am strongly opposed to intervention in the Middle East, but if they want our aid and support, they should apologize unconditionally, round up the perps, and pay compensation.
As a critique of Ryan's Bushophilic record, this is fair enough. However, due to demographic shifts, reluctance to cut military spending or to impose taxes, we have a long-term fiscal problem. I hear the Democrats demagoguing the issue, but not offering any solution. Ryan's solution, as Matt Miller points out, is flawed, but at least he takes up the challenge. The Democrats couldn't even pass a budget when they had 60 votes in the Senate.
And another thing. "Paranoid style" comes out of the Frankfurt School and out of Hofstadter.
Flapdoodle. "The people that disagree with me aren't just wrong, they're crazy." I think you're a smart guy, and you know a lot about the Middle East. When it comes to domestic politics, including gun control, you're not crazy, just gravely mistaken and blind to the dangers of statism, in particular.
Britain has become a Big Brother-CCTV police state where despite omnipresent surveillance, predatory immigrants have free rein to rob, murder and rape the native population.
So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.
If there's really a four-year window until this stuff becomes profitable, there's no need for government subsidies. In our current phase of low interest rates, private companies should be able to raise money hand over fist.
There's no need for federal subsidies for the feckless egomaniac's pals.
1. If the regime is removed there will be an ethnic bloodbath. The intervention will lead to the destruction of another ancient Christian community, not to speak of the Alawites. Even if the US doesn't send in the Airborne as in Iraq, the bloody result will be the same.
2. We have not much of an idea who the disunited opposition is. It seems some kind of Islamist dictatorship is the likely result. Will we like that better than the Assads?
3. "Human rights" has been a bloody fraud since the French Revolution. It is a selective excuse for ill-conceived and bloody interventions. I spit on your "human rights."
4. I question whether an effective civil society is possible in any country where cousin marriage and strong extended family loyalty predominates. A "democracy" of purple thumbs and ritualized elections, without a strong civil society and the rule of law.
5. The masses crave strength.
6. There is no benefit for the United States to be had from any form of intervention.
Conclusion: We should stay completely out. There's nothing in it for us, and our intervention will harm, not help, the Syrians.
If we aren't early adopters, we can reap the benefit of mass production techniques and advances in technology, like third-world countries that won't bother hard-wiring every small village for telephone service, because they can install a few cell towers much more cheaply instead.
"Humanitarian" and internationalist intervention is just as much folly as the neocon variety. Since Wilson we have been intervening abroad to make the world safe for democracy, to fulfill some imaginary "responsibility to protect," and almost always with dire results. If we have any dog in the Syrian fight, it is to protect the Syrian Christians. They support Assad.
We have neither the stomach nor the resources to do what it takes to overthrow Assad, and we have no idea what will follow, other than that it will be bloody. After Iraq and Afghanistan, even Juan Cole hasn't taken in the lesson--don't fight a ground war in Asia.
Partly right. But recognize that the Obama is a tool of Wall Street, kowtows to Israel, is an interventionist liberal-style, an "uplifter" and a centralizer.
Norman Finkelstein may well be right in concluding that the Israelis are deranged. In a regional war they could take Lebanon back, up to the Litani, take the suburbs of Damascus, part of the Sinai, and expel the Palestinians of the West Bank to Jordan. If giving up land did not bring peace, they can take back the land and place themselves in a better position for war.
Also, they may again attempt nuclear blackmail of the United States--let us attack Iran conventionally, or we will unleash our nukes, including a Big One on the Aswan Dam, effectively wiping out a good part of the population of Egypt.
Arabs and Turks did not "go their own way" during WWI--the Arabs, with Anglo-French support, revolted against Turkey, which was allied with Germany and Austria (remember TE Lawrence and Gallipoli).
A surprising misstatement from a scholar of the region.
Bad analogy. NATO ain't the police, Libya ain't "our" home, and I no longer have a typewriter ribbon. If a killer came into my home, I hope I'd have the wit to garrot, shoot, or disembowel the invader.
I'm all for a strong defense. I just want to restrict the mission.
The issue is not whether Q was some kind of lefty hero, but whether the liberal or "humanitarian" interventionism you favor is any wiser or more virtuous than the neocon variety. I contend that it is not, and military force should be limited to the protection of American lives and the prevention of attacks on the United States. In short, what Washington and Quincy Adams favored--trade with all, ally with none, mind our own business, keep our powder dry. Liberal internationalism is just a self-congratulatory wing of the imperialist party.
The end of NATO? 'Twould be a good thing. NATO was formed to resist the Soviet Union and to tame Germany. Neither is a problem any longer. Instead, by expanding NATO eastward in violation of our promises, it became a provocation to Russia.
If Bush had gone to war without so much as a "by your leave" to Congress, the liberals would be screaming. Obama has taken a step toward dictatorship.
Prof Cole, your formulaic liberalism on domestic affairs makes me as tired as your insights into the Muslim world make me wake up and smell the proverbial coffee.
Cut the damn government and cut it all, including the National Security State.
NATO should have been dissolved long ago. Its rationale was to deter or resist a Soviet attack on Western Europe. That's no longer an issue.
After promising Russia we wouldn't, we expanded NATO to the Russian border. We should remove our troops from Europe. They are not needed either to prevent a new German expansion or to deter the Soviets. Then we should dissolve this obsolete bureaucracy.
It would reduce the temptation to intervene where we have no vital interests.
The Assads are an ugly piece of work, but I doubt the alternatives are better. At least they allow a modicum of religions freedom, and confine their military game-playing to semi-deniable proxies.
I don't think, Prof. Cole, that either of us will like Bashar's successor any better. So far he's played a bad hand rather well. The Marquess of Queensbury never lived in the Middle East.
The fact that our President speaks in paragraphs doesn't mean he makes sense. The Secretary of Defense said no vital US interests are involved. If that's accurate, the discussion should be over.
Liberal interventionism is no better than neocon interventionism. Bomb-wring hands-bomb. How about we close 500 bases overseas and spend the money rebuilding our industries devastated by bipartisan "free trade" and "globalisation"?
I don't consider myself a person of the left, a progressive or a liberal, so perhaps I should not comment. When the Secretary of Defense says, without having resigned, that a country in which we are militarily engaged affects no vital interest of the United States, as a citizen of our bankrupt country, I stare in slack-jawed wonder.
Resources are limited. War is a horror, justified only in extremis. Our liberal interventionists seem ready to go to war because Anderson Cooper is upset. We need a radical cutback in our overseas entanglements, a severe reduction in our military budget, and the eloquent clown in the White House gives us a third war, while Kristof and Cole applaud.
What comes out clearly is that Israel is a robber state, and Abbas is reduced to begging to be allowed to keep enough to buy a little milk for his children. Why would a highwayman care about that?
It is really bad taste to jump to conclusions and demagogue this event. The details are just coming out, but that doesn't seem to deter you from making assumptions, and using this crime to tar a whole segment of our political spectrum.
If he were named Ahmed, you'd probably be the first one to say--and rightly so--that the event shouldn't be used to attack Muslims in general.
On the whole, you're right, but it has nothing to do with fascism. Fascism involves a mass movement, not just an authoritarian or oppressive government.
You're right about the typically arrogant Israeli legislation, but you're wrong about race. The populations of Korea, Senegal, and Norway are biologically distinct. Read Cavalli-Sforza. There are racial differences ranging from lactose tolerance to intelligence, whether it's PC to say so or not.
I don't disagree with you, given our present involvement, but I'd like to see us not aiding any military in the region. Lobbies aside, do we have a geopolitical dog in that fight? I think not.
But then, right-wing anti-interventionists like me are a rarity. Can't do much but carp.
I believe Glick was converted by the Aish Ha-Torah cult--"religious Zionists." Reading stuff like this convinces me that Norman Finkelstein may have had a point when he said that Israel was becoming a "lunatic state."
Which are more dangerous, Pakistani nukes or Israeli nukes. Just askin'.
Of course, the biases of an unreconstructed Zionist like Wolf Blitzer are not disqualifying. The mythos of Zionism starts to erode around the edges, and then the rock starts rolling down the mountain again.
When some Middle Eastern régime holds non-uniformed American soldiers as "unlawful combatants," without trial and indefinitely, will the neocons so in love with Gitmo, "enhanced interrogation" and the rest, give them a bye? Or will they vomit up the gander sauce they are served?
Our press, politicians and churches have largely ignored the persecution and exodus of Christians from Muslim countries. Or haven't you noticed?
So "George Bush's poodle" was also a snoop-dog? How droll!
The Alawites are Shi'ites? Really? They may be allied with them, but from what little I know, they have an esoteric, highly syncretic religion, sometimes dressed in islamic trappings.
How does one say, "What a putz!" in Persian?
It won't happen, of course, but this strikes me as grounds for impeachment.
Where is the left? We have all this tedious preening about MLK, and prattle about homosexual marriage. Meanwhile, in August (of course), 99 years after WWI started, mindless missile-rattling is consuming the world, and I haven't heard of so much as a picket line or a telephone tree.
Rand Paul has been way ahead on this issue, as far as I can see.
Stalin's 1936 USSR Constitution has all kinds of high-minded stuff in it. Irrelevant to behavior in real life. It's a Third World speciality.
Kind of like neocons nattering about "human rights."
Brazil has the makings of a civil society. It remains to be seen whether family ties and political gangsterism (with pistol and with fountain pen) can be overcome.
It's a fascinating experiment (I love this kind of technology) , but whether solar-powered flight for masses of passengers will ever be practical remains to be seen. Wishing won't make it so.
There is a political problem with Keynesian policy. It is a lot easier to get governments to deficit spend in recessions, than to get them to run surpluses in times of prosperity, to damp the inflationary and speculative cycle. So the gummint runs deficits year in and year out, regardless of the economy.
Another illustration of why democracy is doomed to self-destruct. The majority tends to vote itself more and more goodies, until the whole system self-destructs. Then, of course, you get tyranny. Just ask Aristotle.
Shows what a fool that man in the White House was to listen to Power, Clinton, and Rice. We had a deal with Gaddhafi and should have stayed out.
Drones are a tactic. The problem is not drones, both the neocon kind and the liberal internationalist kind the author approves.
The point is to get over American exceptionalism and the urge to police the world.
No one in the Middle East will believe this is anything other than an intricate conspiracy.
20,000 emails! If my son were deployed there, in harm's way, I would certainly wonder what kind of leadership he had.
Hey, he got at least 15%. Sobbing all the way to the bank.
He's all right, Jack. The country, however, faces four more years of rule by a feckless egomaniac and his coterie.
Obama may be a bit more cautious sometimes, and prefers bombs to boots on the ground. Liberal interventonism, however, is not really preferable to the more unilateralist style of the GOP.
We should abandon prattle about "human rights" and "democracy," in favor of a cautious reference to "national interest." 'Twould save us and the world a lot of lives, and us a lot of money.
I wish we'd ditch that democratist poppycock.
An attack on an Embassy is an attack on our territory, and on conventions necessary for international relations. I am strongly opposed to intervention in the Middle East, but if they want our aid and support, they should apologize unconditionally, round up the perps, and pay compensation.
I prefer your Omar Khayyam translations.
As a critique of Ryan's Bushophilic record, this is fair enough. However, due to demographic shifts, reluctance to cut military spending or to impose taxes, we have a long-term fiscal problem. I hear the Democrats demagoguing the issue, but not offering any solution. Ryan's solution, as Matt Miller points out, is flawed, but at least he takes up the challenge. The Democrats couldn't even pass a budget when they had 60 votes in the Senate.
And another thing. "Paranoid style" comes out of the Frankfurt School and out of Hofstadter.
Flapdoodle. "The people that disagree with me aren't just wrong, they're crazy." I think you're a smart guy, and you know a lot about the Middle East. When it comes to domestic politics, including gun control, you're not crazy, just gravely mistaken and blind to the dangers of statism, in particular.
Britain has become a Big Brother-CCTV police state where despite omnipresent surveillance, predatory immigrants have free rein to rob, murder and rape the native population.
So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.
--Washington
If there's really a four-year window until this stuff becomes profitable, there's no need for government subsidies. In our current phase of low interest rates, private companies should be able to raise money hand over fist.
There's no need for federal subsidies for the feckless egomaniac's pals.
Bosh.
The same liberals that bellow about police brutality want to disarm the population. A recipe for tyranny.
Al-Assad will outlast Obama.
1. If the regime is removed there will be an ethnic bloodbath. The intervention will lead to the destruction of another ancient Christian community, not to speak of the Alawites. Even if the US doesn't send in the Airborne as in Iraq, the bloody result will be the same.
2. We have not much of an idea who the disunited opposition is. It seems some kind of Islamist dictatorship is the likely result. Will we like that better than the Assads?
3. "Human rights" has been a bloody fraud since the French Revolution. It is a selective excuse for ill-conceived and bloody interventions. I spit on your "human rights."
4. I question whether an effective civil society is possible in any country where cousin marriage and strong extended family loyalty predominates. A "democracy" of purple thumbs and ritualized elections, without a strong civil society and the rule of law.
5. The masses crave strength.
6. There is no benefit for the United States to be had from any form of intervention.
Conclusion: We should stay completely out. There's nothing in it for us, and our intervention will harm, not help, the Syrians.
The bloodbath is a bad, nay, a terrible thing.
The consequences of intervention are guaranteed to be worse. See neighboring Iraq.
Intervention by liberals with UN cover is just as bad as intervention by soi-disant conservatives.
The Syrian régime killed 10,000, they say. Many more killed in Iraq, and four million displaced. And no strategic gain for the US.
If we aren't early adopters, we can reap the benefit of mass production techniques and advances in technology, like third-world countries that won't bother hard-wiring every small village for telephone service, because they can install a few cell towers much more cheaply instead.
"Humanitarian" and internationalist intervention is just as much folly as the neocon variety. Since Wilson we have been intervening abroad to make the world safe for democracy, to fulfill some imaginary "responsibility to protect," and almost always with dire results. If we have any dog in the Syrian fight, it is to protect the Syrian Christians. They support Assad.
We have neither the stomach nor the resources to do what it takes to overthrow Assad, and we have no idea what will follow, other than that it will be bloody. After Iraq and Afghanistan, even Juan Cole hasn't taken in the lesson--don't fight a ground war in Asia.
Didn't they tell you it's 1938?
These guys (except for Dr. Paul) are barking mad.
I detest Obama and those around him, social liberals and banksters, but these warmongers are lunatics.
This is the totalitarianism of the left.
And you've garbled the lefty politics of the Bishops' Conference, which is not doctrine, with Catholic doctrine.
Partly right. But recognize that the Obama is a tool of Wall Street, kowtows to Israel, is an interventionist liberal-style, an "uplifter" and a centralizer.
What's wrong with white people? Were it not for Anglo-Celtic Protestants, we would have no country.
Are you a "self-hating" white man?
If the régime falls, what follows will be worse, especially for Syria's Christians.
Be careful what you wish for.
Egypt? Where's that?
Assad will survive. Watch.
Norman Finkelstein may well be right in concluding that the Israelis are deranged. In a regional war they could take Lebanon back, up to the Litani, take the suburbs of Damascus, part of the Sinai, and expel the Palestinians of the West Bank to Jordan. If giving up land did not bring peace, they can take back the land and place themselves in a better position for war.
Also, they may again attempt nuclear blackmail of the United States--let us attack Iran conventionally, or we will unleash our nukes, including a Big One on the Aswan Dam, effectively wiping out a good part of the population of Egypt.
Question: do we have a dog in any of these fights? Benign neglect might be our best course.
Arabs and Turks did not "go their own way" during WWI--the Arabs, with Anglo-French support, revolted against Turkey, which was allied with Germany and Austria (remember TE Lawrence and Gallipoli).
A surprising misstatement from a scholar of the region.
I'd say the question is whether the United States should intervene at all, and the answer is rarely, if at all.
Bad analogy. NATO ain't the police, Libya ain't "our" home, and I no longer have a typewriter ribbon. If a killer came into my home, I hope I'd have the wit to garrot, shoot, or disembowel the invader.
I'm all for a strong defense. I just want to restrict the mission.
The issue is not whether Q was some kind of lefty hero, but whether the liberal or "humanitarian" interventionism you favor is any wiser or more virtuous than the neocon variety. I contend that it is not, and military force should be limited to the protection of American lives and the prevention of attacks on the United States. In short, what Washington and Quincy Adams favored--trade with all, ally with none, mind our own business, keep our powder dry. Liberal internationalism is just a self-congratulatory wing of the imperialist party.
The chloroform is a nice touch. Duct tape might work, too. Ask Dexter.
Sheer folly. Whatever happened to noninterference in the affairs of a sovereign state?
Besides, if Bashir falls, which is far from certain, what follows will be worse.
I say the Assads win, unless Turkey intervenes. The masses crave strength.
The end of NATO? 'Twould be a good thing. NATO was formed to resist the Soviet Union and to tame Germany. Neither is a problem any longer. Instead, by expanding NATO eastward in violation of our promises, it became a provocation to Russia.
If Bush had gone to war without so much as a "by your leave" to Congress, the liberals would be screaming. Obama has taken a step toward dictatorship.
War is the health of the state. Always was, always will be.
The question is whether we can abandon the empire, or whether it will collapse. I suspect the latter is more likely.
Sue these bastards.
Prof Cole, your formulaic liberalism on domestic affairs makes me as tired as your insights into the Muslim world make me wake up and smell the proverbial coffee.
Cut the damn government and cut it all, including the National Security State.
NATO should have been dissolved long ago. Its rationale was to deter or resist a Soviet attack on Western Europe. That's no longer an issue.
After promising Russia we wouldn't, we expanded NATO to the Russian border. We should remove our troops from Europe. They are not needed either to prevent a new German expansion or to deter the Soviets. Then we should dissolve this obsolete bureaucracy.
It would reduce the temptation to intervene where we have no vital interests.
The Assads are an ugly piece of work, but I doubt the alternatives are better. At least they allow a modicum of religions freedom, and confine their military game-playing to semi-deniable proxies.
I don't think, Prof. Cole, that either of us will like Bashar's successor any better. So far he's played a bad hand rather well. The Marquess of Queensbury never lived in the Middle East.
The fact that our President speaks in paragraphs doesn't mean he makes sense. The Secretary of Defense said no vital US interests are involved. If that's accurate, the discussion should be over.
Liberal interventionism is no better than neocon interventionism. Bomb-wring hands-bomb. How about we close 500 bases overseas and spend the money rebuilding our industries devastated by bipartisan "free trade" and "globalisation"?
I don't consider myself a person of the left, a progressive or a liberal, so perhaps I should not comment. When the Secretary of Defense says, without having resigned, that a country in which we are militarily engaged affects no vital interest of the United States, as a citizen of our bankrupt country, I stare in slack-jawed wonder.
Resources are limited. War is a horror, justified only in extremis. Our liberal interventionists seem ready to go to war because Anderson Cooper is upset. We need a radical cutback in our overseas entanglements, a severe reduction in our military budget, and the eloquent clown in the White House gives us a third war, while Kristof and Cole applaud.
Sorry, don't get this a-tall.
What comes out clearly is that Israel is a robber state, and Abbas is reduced to begging to be allowed to keep enough to buy a little milk for his children. Why would a highwayman care about that?
It is really bad taste to jump to conclusions and demagogue this event. The details are just coming out, but that doesn't seem to deter you from making assumptions, and using this crime to tar a whole segment of our political spectrum.
If he were named Ahmed, you'd probably be the first one to say--and rightly so--that the event shouldn't be used to attack Muslims in general.
Take a Valium and gather the facts, first
These folks have generous health plans, pension rights, and public safety disability. They are not in dire need of a federal handout.
If someone says "9/11" are we supposed to shut off our brains?
My daughter's Congerssman and my hero.
On the whole, you're right, but it has nothing to do with fascism. Fascism involves a mass movement, not just an authoritarian or oppressive government.
Be precise, Professor.
Fair enough.
But this is a bipartisan rap. The vile Chuck Schumer is just as fervent, or servile, take your pick, when it comes to Zionism.
Interventionist internationalism is the common coin of both parties. The differences are mere nuances.
An otherwise good post marred by a gratuitous slap at Christianity.
You're right about the typically arrogant Israeli legislation, but you're wrong about race. The populations of Korea, Senegal, and Norway are biologically distinct. Read Cavalli-Sforza. There are racial differences ranging from lactose tolerance to intelligence, whether it's PC to say so or not.
I despise the current anti-Muslim campaign, but I think you're jumping the gun. The guy might simply be delusional. You don't know. So don't say.
I don't disagree with you, given our present involvement, but I'd like to see us not aiding any military in the region. Lobbies aside, do we have a geopolitical dog in that fight? I think not.
But then, right-wing anti-interventionists like me are a rarity. Can't do much but carp.
And when are the four million displaced Iraqis going home? No doubt when the shrimps whistle.
"They make desolation, and call it peace."
I believe Glick was converted by the Aish Ha-Torah cult--"religious Zionists." Reading stuff like this convinces me that Norman Finkelstein may have had a point when he said that Israel was becoming a "lunatic state."
Which are more dangerous, Pakistani nukes or Israeli nukes. Just askin'.
I agree with you, and I value things like correct apostrophe use, but it was a bit petty to pick on the English in a tweet.
Of course, the biases of an unreconstructed Zionist like Wolf Blitzer are not disqualifying. The mythos of Zionism starts to erode around the edges, and then the rock starts rolling down the mountain again.
Disheartening.
"Never give a sucker an even break." --P.T. Barnum
When some Middle Eastern régime holds non-uniformed American soldiers as "unlawful combatants," without trial and indefinitely, will the neocons so in love with Gitmo, "enhanced interrogation" and the rest, give them a bye? Or will they vomit up the gander sauce they are served?