View Topic

This is a continuation of a discussion with Ashton Mercer.

Anyway, wake up and smell the god-damn coffee. The situation in Africa and the Middle East has always been such that the vicious tyrants in power are pretty much the best case scenario, not least because of Western exploitation. America's laughable attempts to fix things have made a horrible situation way worse. The idealism among your citizens and some of your politicians is admirable, but it's just not working. Don't even get me started on the UN's complete and utter disinterest in tyrannies and warzones without the black gold that fuels Western economies.
 Hypocrisy of the first order, if I may say.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/429355/supporting-assad-best-option

What does this have to do with Putin? Very little. I simply don't dislike or distrust him anymore than any other prominent world leaders. Call me a cynic if you like.

EDIT: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/439161/aleppo-syria-moderate-secular-rebels-al-qaeda-muslim-brotherhood-russia-iran

EDIT 2: Since it's always nice to have multiple sources for a varied view of things: www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/putins-middle-east-policy-causes-and-consequences

So, all this gets back to my (hopefully) abundantly clear point that I don't trust any of these sons of bitches. Let them play their little games, and I'll continue on with my insignificant yet more peaceful life.

@Ashton
Assad is Syria's best chance for a stable, secular state that isn't ruled by the whims of Salafist populists and their droves of idiot followers. To allow Syria to fall into the hands of the so-called "moderate" islamists would be the death sentence for Syria's religious minorities. A sunni led Syria would inevitably go down that road, which is why it can't be allowed to happen. It's simply not ready. Not until we finally wipe out the abomination that is Saudi Arabia when they stop giving oil and their salafist bullshit artistry is shut down forever. When the Hashemites are able to take back their ancestral home of Hejaz, and the sheeplovers of Nejd have been put in their place. Only then can we trust the middle east to accept republican democracy. Until that point the only hope lies in constitutional monarchies, which we were stupid to not prop up in Iraq and Afghanistan.
#MonarchismForLife2016

@Justinian Ezkantion and @Ashton Mercer, I've split the discussion off from the Werewolf sign-ups. Getting so wildly off topic can be distracting to those with no interest in the discussion.

I gave my opinion of Putin. He can go sit in a hole and drink himself silly with some Smirnoff, I don't care. He's a shitty dude with shitty policies and I won't be sad when he steps down or dies.

Of course there are many bad apples in the ranks of the "moderate" rebels, but there has to be someone we can support so that we are not giving legitimacy to a ruler who happily slaughters his own people with chemical weapons when they request that he plays by the fucking rules. The Free Syrian Army and some groups of the Syrian Democratic Forces, as well as the Kurds (they're a more complex story with Turkey and Iraq and all but still) all come to mind. My logic is that Syria once was a semi-functioning Arab democracy, and there is no reason it can't go back to being one without Assad.

I believe it to be true that a reformed Syrian government under a different, less insanely evil dictator could be as good of a solution as we could get, but Assad must die. If Assad isn't either wasting away in a jail cell in The Hague or hanging from a streetlight in Damascus within the next ten to twenty years, the hope of a peaceful global community and the ideals of universal human rights will be more of a joke then they are already. Every dictator and oppressor, aspiring or established, will see Syria and realize that no matter how bad it gets, if they can paint all the democratic rebels as "terrorists", they will have the international community's support. The UN is shitty and hypocritical (through no fault of their own: the myriad Security Council defects stop them from doing anything meaningful without NATO) but it is not this shitty and hypocritical. The State Department has seen this and has made their recommendations to the US military clear: to restore peace to the region, along with fighting ISIS, we must attack Syrian government forces and end Assad's regime.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/17/world/middleeast/document-state-dept-syria.html

Saudi Arabia's days are numbered as it is. Slowly, westernization and a push for human rights will hopefully turn the region from a insane monarchy into a functioning Arab democracy like Egypt is (or was, depending on whether or not you like the Muslim Brotherhood) or perhaps a tolerable monarchy like Morroco (favorite Arab state <3). Arab Spring blew over them like a breeze, but the rain is still drifting towards them. It's a matter of time. We don't need to swoop in like Crusaders: just step up our intelligence and drone usage in the region until the Saudis fold in on themselves or wither away.

Then we can repartition Iraq into three states (Iraqi Kurdistan, Sunni Iraq and Shia Iraq) and figure out what the fuck is going on with Israel and Palestine.

A few too many "there has to be" and "hopefully" approaches you've listed for my liking, there.

I should note that I don't believe in democracy in the slightest, so our understanding of what constitutes legitimacy is always going to differ, and that is probably a road block to getting us on the same page. I don't believe any government is legitimate. I simply tolerate any number of them that can get the god-damned job done and leave me in peace. I still think any government official is either naïve, or an ego-maniacal fucktard. Putin is in the latter category, and Obama, as much as I respect the man's conviction, will always be too weak for my tastes.

Back to mid east conflicts: why not leave Assad to sort out all the shit, and THEN move in to depose or influence him? Pick your battles by order of importance: ISIS is an abomination that has to go. Assad is an abomination that has to go. We can't do both today, so handle ISIS first, and come back to finish the job with Assad later.

Of course, if you then come to the conclusion that without fucktards like Assad in place, and in the absence of any possibility of erasing the fuckery that was the Sykes-Picot agreement, that it would just fall into the same shit state (or worse) it's currently in, then leave it the fuck alone. Scratching where it doesn't itch has helped no one, ever.

When will we start learning from history?

EDIT: Also, what once was will not necessarily work again. The situation has changed. The social issues that have shaped these people's lives for so long have changed them. I don't think it's realistic to expect them to function without Assad again. I think someone new, who's infinitely worse, would find a way to move in. The devil you know...

I would like to start by sincerely apologizing to @Laurentus to starting a political discussion in a forum game sign-up sheet. I just am disgusted with the pseudo-cult of personality that's around him on the internet that fools people who don't know better into thinking he's a good leader.

I look forward to having my 12 year old Kazakh character vote him for imprisonment every turn when the game starts.

A few too many "there has to be" and "hopefully" approaches you've listed for my liking, there.

I should note that I don't believe in democracy in the slightest, so our understanding of what constitutes legitimacy is always going to differ, and that is probably a road block to getting us on the same page. I don't believe any government is legitimate. I simply tolerate any number of them that can get the god-damned job done and leave me in peace. I still think any government official is either naïve, or an ego-maniacal fucktard. Putin is in the latter category, and Obama, as much as I respect the man's conviction, will always be too weak for my tastes.

Back to mid east conflicts: why not leave Assad to sort out all the shit, and THEN move in to depose or influence him? Pick your battles by order of importance: ISIS is an abomination that has to go. Assad is an abomination that has to go. We can't do both today, so handle ISIS first, and come back to finish the job with Assad later.

Of course, if you then come to the conclusion that without fucktards like Assad in place, and in the absence of any possibility of erasing the fuckery that was the Sykes-Picot agreement, that it would just fall into the same shit state (or worse) it's currently in, then leave it the fuck alone. Scratching where it doesn't itch has helped no one, ever.

When will we start learning from history?

Only a Sith deals in absolutes.

Fair enough. If your view is one that espouses whatever government isn't bothering you at the moment, there's no good reason to care about the middle east. My view is one that holds human rights in the highest regard, no matter the time or the place, as well as one that espouses secular constitutional democracy. I firmly believe myself not only to be an American, but a citizen of the world, and what I see happening to innocent people is unacceptable. These are all things that Assad (and to a much lesser degree Putin) have both shown complete lack of caring for, and I believe that Assad in particular must pay. Especially since what he started by refusing to step down in 2011 is beginning to destabilize Europe and parts of the Middle East as a whole, throwing the entire balance of the world into a dark spiral that it may never recover from. We need to send a message that this will not be accepted.

I can't say I disagree with you with the "ISIS first, then Assad" doctrine idea, but it has never worked that way. When the international community joins a side in a war, that side is there to stay. That kind of betrayal isn't something the UN or NATO are particularly good at, nor is it something that most Americans would be comfortable with ("Hey, weren't we fighting alongside these guys like a month ago against literally the Devil?"). It would also send a bad message to less-than-savory regimes in Asia and Africa that might be planning to side with the West and could be brought into the "human rights and democracy" fold by non-violent means. It would also be pure propaganda for nations like Iran and North Korea: "Look what happens when you make a deal with the West! They'll come for your enemies, yes, but then they will come for YOU!" Even if the deal with Assad was a small one, like "Stay here while we fuck up ISIS, don't get in our way", it would still look incredibly bad and might end up doing more harm than a full-on attack on both would.

The re-partition of the Middle East under ethnic lines is ideal, but I have a feeling it would just shift what we call the combatants from "terrorists" and "fighters" to "(Shia nation-state) soldiers" or "(Sunni nation-state) forces". What we need is a change in culture, a change in ideas, and that unfortunately doesn't come easily. The Internet and foreign aid can help, if we play it right.

We start learning from history when we figure out that inaction has never helped anyone. If we had started bombing Assad and ended it when we had the opportunity to 4-5 years ago, none of this ever would have happened. I think the international community learned a valuable lesson about failing to act, but it won't do them much good now that nobody knows what the fuck to do.

You seem to ignore just how much harm acting has inflicted, too. Recent examples being the fall of Saddam and Qadaffi. That is also history that must be taken into account.

In truth, the more I think about things like these, the more apathetic (or even cynical) I become. No matter what you do, someone is always going to find a way to fuck up your hard work at sorting out the world's problems. We as a species are just terrible.

EDIT: And as it so happens, quite amusingly, my sympathies have always firmly belonged to the Sith. I don't like the Jedi.

You seem to ignore just how much harm acting has inflicted, too. Recent examples being the fall of Saddam and Qadaffi. That is also history that must be taken into account.

In truth, the more I think about things like these, the more apathetic (or even cynical) I become. No matter what you do, someone is always going to find a way to fuck up your hard work at sorting out the world's problems. We as a species are just terrible.

EDIT: And as it so happens, quite amusingly, my sympathies have always firmly belonged to the Sith. I don't like the Jedi.

Libya and Iraq were both improperly managed post-intervention (Iraq devastatingly so).

Truth is, intervention from foreign powers without it explicitly being for colonial activities is a very new concept, with the first applications only arising in the 1990s (or 1950s if you count the UN's actions with the Korean War: I don't because it was more of a Cold War conflict than anything). We're still learning and growing, and if we don't lose sight of the end goal (a peaceful democratic world), we just might succeed in some way. If I were to give up that hope... I don't even know.

You could make an argument that the Sith were better than the Jedi, and I might even be convinced, but the actions of the Death Star renders it null. You simply can't root for the side that uses it's planet-shattering superweapon willy-nilly. My sympathies from Episode IV out are with the Jedi.

Lol, I sense we're going to need a new topic for the Sith-Jedi conflict. Short answer: one act, no matter how despicable, is not enough to condemn that side forever. (Ahem, real word example that is probably going to piss people off: America nuking Japan).

I posted quite a hilarious article about this very subject a short while ago. I'll find it and tag you when I've managed to locate it again.

I gave my opinion of Putin. He can go sit in a hole and drink himself silly with some Smirnoff, I don't care. He's a shitty dude with shitty policies and I won't be sad when he steps down or dies.

Of course there are many bad apples in the ranks of the "moderate" rebels, but there has to be someone we can support so that we are not giving legitimacy to a ruler who happily slaughters his own people with chemical weapons when they request that he plays by the fucking rules. The Free Syrian Army and some groups of the Syrian Democratic Forces, as well as the Kurds (they're a more complex story with Turkey and Iraq and all but still) all come to mind. My logic is that Syria once was a semi-functioning Arab democracy, and there is no reason it can't go back to being one without Assad.

I believe it to be true that a reformed Syrian government under a different, less insanely evil dictator could be as good of a solution as we could get, but Assad must die. If Assad isn't either wasting away in a jail cell in The Hague or hanging from a streetlight in Damascus within the next ten to twenty years, the hope of a peaceful global community and the ideals of universal human rights will be more of a joke then they are already. Every dictator and oppressor, aspiring or established, will see Syria and realize that no matter how bad it gets, if they can paint all the democratic rebels as "terrorists", they will have the international community's support. The UN is shitty and hypocritical (through no fault of their own: the myriad Security Council defects stop them from doing anything meaningful without NATO) but it is not this shitty and hypocritical. The State Department has seen this and has made their recommendations to the US military clear: to restore peace to the region, along with fighting ISIS, we must attack Syrian government forces and end Assad's regime.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/17/world/middleeast/document-state-dept-syria.html

Saudi Arabia's days are numbered as it is. Slowly, westernization and a push for human rights will hopefully turn the region from a insane monarchy into a functioning Arab democracy like Egypt is (or was, depending on whether or not you like the Muslim Brotherhood) or perhaps a tolerable monarchy like Morroco (favorite Arab state <3). Arab Spring blew over them like a breeze, but the rain is still drifting towards them. It's a matter of time. We don't need to swoop in like Crusaders: just step up our intelligence and drone usage in the region until the Saudis fold in on themselves or wither away.

Then we can repartition Iraq into three states (Iraqi Kurdistan, Sunni Iraq and Shia Iraq) and figure out what the fuck is going on with Israel and Palestine.

It's absolutely naive to believe that the House of Sa'ud would go out willingly. They have created the current fundamentalist movement in Islam purely to preserve their own position. Assad shouldn't continue his presidency, I don't disagree with that. But the government forces are supported by Syrian people for a reason. The rebels are Sunni populists and Jihadists and would love nothing more than to expel the Alawites, Christians, and any other minority religious groups. The ones that don't (the FSA and the Kurds) are either two weak to face their own jihadist  coalition partners in the inevitable second civil war that would break out following a rebel victory in the case of the former or in the case of the latter completely disinterested in the overall fate of the rest of Syria outside of their own region. Speaking of religious minorities, they are the reason that a "clean" division of Iraq between Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites is not really clean. Guaranteeing a land to a specific religion means that such minorities would likely be expulsed (likely to Kurdistan and/or Western Countries). The Syrian Army must win if a second civil war is to be avoided, as the rebels are basically only united in their mutual hatred of Assad, and once Assad ends up fleeing to Russia what happens? They turn on each other like so many other similarly formed coalitions. And let's not discount the fourth player in the arena, the Al-Qaeda backed Army of Conquest, who would be just as terrible as ISIS if given the chance to take their place. As for your example of a stable Arab democracy, Egypt, need I remind you that the popular government elected by the people was the Muslim Brotherhood, who immediately started their usual shtick before being rightly deposed by the MILITARY. That is not stability, that is an unsustainable system, as we have witnessed in Turkey, where Erdogan has capitalized on religious populism and created a de facto dictatorship while defeating all attempts by the military to remove him. A Head of State is needed that most of the country respects, a monarch. A symbol of pre-Cold War simplicity. A time before Baathism and Salafist infiltration. If Morocco and Jordan are any indication, this is probably the only working, sustainable system. Speaking of Jordan, their ruling house, the Hashemites, had ruled Hejaz (western coast of Saudi Arabia) for 700 years, and were much better keeper of the holy city of Mecca. The Saudis, on the other hand, have used their position as its controller to radicalize Sunni Islam as they wish. They have demolished anything going against their extreme iconoclasm and have turned Mecca from a historic city mostly unchanged for centuries into a discount Vegas nearly falling apart at the seams. The crushed reported every year are a result of their own incompetence. When the Saudis finally fall, we must separate Hejaz from them and give it back to its rightful owners.

I'm not entirely sure how to format this though :/

But it's a good video

http://media.mtvnservices.com/embed/mgid:arc:video:comedycentral.com:4514eb0f-175c-4dd7-93c5-e19cee548eff

Spoiler

I'm not entirely sure how to format this though :/

http://media.mtvnservices.com/embed/mgid:arc:video:comedycentral.com:4514eb0f-175c-4dd7-93c5-e19cee548eff

Error, this content is not available in your country

I'm not even going try opening it, then.

I'm not entirely sure how to format this though :/

http://media.mtvnservices.com/embed/mgid:arc:video:comedycentral.com:4514eb0f-175c-4dd7-93c5-e19cee548eff

Error, this content is not available in your country

I'm not even going try opening it, then.

Noooo!!!!

Just search for "Sir Archibald Mapsalot III" on Google.

Or use a VPN... but I'm not sure which countries would work other than US and Canada if the UK doesn't work!! 

In light of this discussion, I'll put this here.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/37324872

I certainly didn't expect it to go this way. Fingers crossed for the rebels.