Anniversary: Sadness Follows Thirteen Years Later

September 11 again.

Last year, I was worried about how the world had remained a bloody, violent place since 2001 as the Syrian Civil War was well into its third year.  It's now in its fourth, and due to the extremist group ISIL it's bled over back into neighboring Iraq which still hasn't recovered from the ill-planned Bush/Cheney occupation.

Last night Obama gave a speech outlining how we were committing airstrikes against the Islamist State psychopaths.  We are remaking military commitments to a nation we tried to exit back in 2011, mostly because we as a nation failed to leave Iraq in better shape than when we invaded it in 2003.  Mostly because we dove head-first into a Middle East quagmire out of anger and blind rage.

We had no reason to invade Iraq in response to what Bin Laden did to us on 9/11.  The reasons were fabricated by a Bush/Cheney administration that wanted to invade Iraq for other objectives (finishing off Saddam, placating our allies in the region who didn't like having a dictator for a neighbor, seizing all that oil and natural resources).  We had no plan for what to do with nation-building.  Well, there was a plan: remove Saddam and his ilk, put in pet Chalabi on the throne, sign up all the oil rights, exit Iraq.  When it happened that nobody in Iraq wanted Chalabi and he wasn't the puppy Cheney thought he was, it turned out we had no Plan B.

Because with the Middle East there IS no Plan B.  Just an ongoing, 5000-year cycle of violence and madness that will only end when everybody's dead.

And we are all stuck.  The innocent people in the Middle East trapped between warring factions.  Other nations tied to the region through all that damn oil.  A United States that's morally and politically obligated to keep dropping itself into that quagmire because we've been breaking things there since World War II and we're stuck paying the bills for the next century.

We're bombing away in Iraq today.  Because the Towers fell thirteen years ago.  We have no idea when we can stop bombing.

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Anniversary: The Fuse

(update: big hello to the Crooks and Liars audience, welcome back)
History teaches us that the War was inevitable.

There was this... understanding across the nations of Europe at the turn of the 20th Century.  The empires of the 19th Century had made treaties and agreements to protect their global power by dividing themselves into two armed camps.  Revolving around the animosities between France and newly-forged Germany, the other nations and empires - Great Britain, Austria-Hungarian Empire, Russia, newly-forged Italy - chose sides to back in case France and Germany decided to start a thing.

It all came from the belief in a Balance of Power working between the nations/empires of Europe: that no one nation would become stronger or more powerful than the others, requiring nations to gang up against the growing "threat" to ensure war wouldn't happen...  Except that, by the 20th Century, various powers wanted war in order to satisfy their needs or avenge some slight.

Or, as Captain Blackadder so rightly put it: "It was bollocks."

The splits had formed over slights and injuries spanning decades: France being humiliated by Prussia/Germany in 1871; Russia being slighted over Austria-Hungary's control over the Balkans; Great Britain threatened by Germany's growing Imperial Navy and open desire for empire-building in places the UK already controlled; Germany's desire to make themselves an economic powerhouse equal to a British Empire the Kaiser Wilhelm II - cousin to the British Royals - so wanted to emulate.  Underneath all of this was a budding sense of Nationalism - a tribal impulse of patriotism - merged with various elements of anarchism and economic malaise.

By the early 1900s, all of Europe was a literal powder-keg: each nation building up arsenals and weapons of increasing technological lethality that few of the generals and men in power even comprehended how dangerous war was becoming.  While the peace held, it was merely over the fact nobody wanted to be the idiot to start the whole thing blowing up.  Nobody wanted the blame once the dust settled...

Except for the ones who didn't care.

For all the politicians and men of power who knew to tread lightly, Europe was also filled with ethnic factions subsumed by the aging Empires affected by the same Nationalist pride.  Except that Nationalist pride drove them - especially the Serbians in the Austrian-held Balkans - towards a desire for self-determination, the right to form their own nation outside of imperial dominance.  They'd seen nations like Greece gain their independence from the Ottoman Empire - a Middle Eastern empire on the edge of the European boiling pot - and they'd seen Italy and Germany form themselves into true nations out of divided squabbling states.  So these smaller states, these ethnic groups, sought their own nations.

This brings us to Serbia.

Serbians had been suffering for centuries, a once proud eastern European culture taken over by the Ottomans in the late 1300s.  By the mid-19th Century they were able to fight back to gain some independence from the Ottomans only to suffer new rule under the Austria-Hungarians as part of a Russo-Turkish treaty.  While Serbia retained some independence as a nation it still had to answer to the Habsburgs in Vienna, and was blocked from expanding further influence in the Balkan region.

The resentments led to various factions in Serbia plotting for action against the Austrians.  Violence and riots were common throughout the region leading up into 1914.  When the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria decided on a visit to the region as part of his military duties to the Navy (Austria-Hungary had access to the Mediterranean through their hold of Bosnia), he also planned on visiting Sarajevo for a museum dedication on the date of his wedding anniversary with his beloved wife Sophie.

That was June 28.

Welcome to the anniversary date of the starting point of World War I: the assassination of the Archduke and his wife.

Done as a protest against Austria-Hungarian hegemony, for Serbian nationalism pushing for a Greater Serbia dominating all of the Balkans, it was the excuse the powers back in Vienna needed to stomp down on a Serbian nation they viewed as a threat.

Problem was, Russia had become allies of Serbia by then.  Russia's interests in eastern Europe had always been there ever since the birth of their own empire.  When Austria-Hungary mobilized for a war on Serbia by July 28, it triggered clauses in treaties Russia had with Serbia and with their Entente with France and UK to mobilize, which triggered Germany's mobilization, which triggered France's...

One trigger unleashed another.  At no point did any national leader "man up" and say "wait, this is stupid, this is a fight between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, it doesn't involve us!"  Germany didn't need to mobilize against Russia... France didn't need to mobilize versus Germany... Germany didn't need to invade Belgium to preemptively fight France, which gave Great Britain the excuse to jump in... except that there were enough people in power in each of those nations who argued that war was war, that it would be quick and easy with everybody's allies lining up to fight it, and now was the time to pitch in.

Like Blackadder said, bollocks.

Whatever ideals or hope there had been in the 19th Century that humanity as a whole was stepping towards a more evolved, artistic, sensible future died in the muddy trenches of the war fronts.  Once started, neither side had little incentive to end it fearing the consequences of national collapse and panic.  For four years, the European powers pummeled each other until they had placed serious strains on their manpower and resources.

None of it ended well.

Germany, trying to destroy Russia from within, unleashed a communist uprising in the heart of a frayed Russia that led to the rise of the Soviet Union and to the horrors of Stalin.  Austria-Hungary fell apart through a prolonged war that drained their resources.  Italy, jumping in late on the side of the French-UK-Russian Entente, found their fortunes ruined in disastrous military campaigns that collapsed their government, leading to the rise of the Fascists under Mussolini.  The Ottoman Empire fell apart through British intervention in the tribal uprisings across the Middle East.  Great Britain and France lost hundreds of thousands of men against the German lines.  Germany used up much of its resources and men as well.  Germany's desperation against the UK led to their attacking American shipping and trade interests, dragging the United States into the war.

When the fighting finally stopped on November 11 1918, it was due more to fatigue on all sides than due to any actual victory.  But Germany's government fell apart as a result of the armistice, and France and Great Britain wielded enough influence on the following peace process that its lopsided punishments on Germany convinced a good number of politicians and historians to note that the peace wouldn't last (and it was because some of them like General Foch believed the treaty was too lenient and would allow Germany to rebuild).  And we all know what that bloody Treaty of Versailles led to...

It didn't help that some of the underlying issues causing the war - the fervent tribalism that masqueraded as nationalism, for example - weren't properly resolved.  France and Great Britain still had their empires to maintain after all, and they exerted their influences into the Middle East by carving up the remnants of the Ottoman Empire into nations that forced the wrong ethnic groups in the region into the wrong states.  While the bloody history of the Middle East has existed long before the European map-makers made their mark in the region, the drawing up of Syria, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Palestine (without an Israel at that time), Turkey and other regional nations with reckless disregard for ignored groups like the Kurds and ignorance of the divisions between Shia and Sunni faiths certainly exacerbated tensions to where we've got the bloody chaos the world endures to this day.

It was 100 years ago the modern world was born.  In fire and in blood and in death.  We've been dealing with the consequences ever since, more than any other historical event preceding it.

God help us all today.

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Should The Legacy of 9/11 Be More War?

Today is another remembrance of 9/11/01.  On this day we remember that 2,000-plus people lost their lives to 19 idiots seeking glory in death, ordered by another group of idiots who hid in a cave and didn't have the balls to do the deed themselves.

Today we remember that we as a nation launched a war on Afghanistan where those idiots were hiding, protected by a fundamentalist Taliban regime.  Today we have to remember that we're still in Afghanistan fighting those Taliban forces who will most likely re-seize power the second we leave, which is pretty much what the cave idiots want out of us: perpetual war.

Today we remember that we as a nation got lied to by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney regarding Iraq: that Saddam was tied in with those cave idiots (that was a lie), that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (that was a lie), that Saddam was a threat to Middle East security (the 1991 Persian Gulf war neutered his forces), that felling Saddam would bring peace and democracy to the Middle East (Cheney and Co. wanted to put Chalabi on the throne and leave a puppet regime in place).

This last remembrance is key, because it's a very good reason why a vast majority of Americans do not want our nation under Obama to go starting another military action in the Middle East.  On this day, we're thinking about Syria as much as we're thinking about the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and Flight 93.

The Syrian civil war is one of the messiest results of the Arab Spring of two years prior (the collapses of Egypt and Libya over this summer are starting to get as bad).  We've got 2 million refugees across the borders and 4 million more displaced within Syria: a massive humanitarian disaster in the making.  Adding to the problem is that the current Assad regime isn't a friendly or humane government... and that a growing number of Syrian rebel forces are tied into the Al Qaeda cave idiot extremists, meaning the U.S. really doesn't have an honest side to back.

The biggest headache is how Assad's government does have WMDs in the form of chemical weapons.  While warfare is a bloody mess regardless what weapons are used, chemical warfare is a Big No-No: the risk to civilian exposure is the biggest worry, especially since there's little warning when the attacks come and there's not a lot of people going around with gas masks.  When the fighting got worse, but the U.S. had no reason or allied support to go in, Obama issued a stern warning (the "red line") that chemical weapon usage would cause reprisals.

Chemical weapons got used.

Forced to uphold the "red line", Obama did what every other President seeking military action would do: call on allies to back him up.  This time, however, our allies refused.  In a public display of rejection, the British Parliament voted against the call for support.  Going to the UN for a military airstrike - missile or aerial bombing - was out of the question with Syria's backer Russia nearly certain to veto any action.

This brought him back to the U.S. going to Congress to ask for a resolution (something Presidents are supposed to do, but because of constitutional question marks they avoid this step).  This was originally viewed as the one thing the Republicans would actually back Obama on... except now there's no guarantee as the House GOP obstruction game-plan (destroy Obamacare, destroy Obama, destroy the government, etc) is back in full effect.

The worrying thing is how the knee-jerk reaction comes so easy on this: the urge to use military force as the first step rather than the last.  There is this lingering paranoia among our political leaders that nobody wants to look "weak".  That nobody wants to be accountable when something goes wrong, except for when a military strike could go wrong, in which case the answer would be an escalation in the fighting.

The current situation - the possibility of a diplomatic solution to the chemical weapons, it won't stop the fighting but it will reduce the need for the world power(s) to get further entangled - provides some hope for the present and the future.  If the United States can get Russia to back the effort, if Russia can get Syria to sign onto the chemical warfare treaties limiting their use, if Syria honestly gives up control of those weapons to international (UN) observers...  For the first time in what seems like decades, we would have a diplomatic solution to a problem rather than a military one.

And wouldn't that be a better legacy Post-9/11 than yet another war?

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How To Cut a Gordian Knot

Ever hear of Lateral Thinking?  It's a problem-solving method of using non-conventional or unorthodox means to solve an otherwise intractable problem.  Where logic fails, you apply some illogical method that most people wouldn't see coming.

An example would be the legend of Alexander the Great confronting the problem of the Gordian Knot.  Where most everyone else tried to physically untie the knot, Alexander cut it with his sword.  It may seem like cheating, but it wasn't against the rules.  It symbolized how Alexander would conquer Persia/Middle East with the sword.

A modern-day Gordian Knot is the whole Middle East itself: war-ravaged, divided, tribalistic... if there's been a solution to stopping the ongoing violence that has plagued the region since, well, ever, no one's found it yet.

Part of the problem is that each region has its own internal issues that forces external politics to react disproportionately... and reverberates against every other problematic nation within shouting (or shooting) distance.  You've got 20 Gordian Knots adding up to one big Knot... and there's not a big enough sword to cut them all, not all at once.

For the United States, tied into the Middle East due to our alliances to various nations in the region (Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Libya) - and our opposition to other nations such as Iran and Syria - we're coping with the disastrous civil war in Syria by trying to enforce the unenforceable.  Syria is one of the nations with a sizable chemical weapons stockpile, and there's been recent usage of chemical weapons that's killing/wounding hundreds of civilians caught in the cross-fire of the civil war.  Obama tried earlier to push a "red line" stance on the use of chemicals... but now that they've been used, Obama's finding himself in almost no position to enforce it.

The standard response to what's happened in Syria is a "surgical" or tactical strike against key Syrian government targets, usually buildings that we plan to have as few people in them as possible when the missiles/bombs hit.  However, this most likely won't discourage Assad or his allies: it may actually make them react in the worst way.

Troubling Obama is the fact that this time the United States doesn't have many allies lining up to back any such strike.  The British Parliament voted against it.  NATO (outside of France, who will only provide political cover and not much else) is reportedly not in favor either.  There hasn't been an attempt to take this to the UN for a resolution, since the odds are Russia (Syria's biggest ally) and China will not play along.  It's gotten to where the only way Obama can get any political cover for striking Syria is by taking this to Congress to get a vote on a "limited military action", which he's kinda supposed to do under the War Powers Act but is something most Presidents haven't done in what seems like ages (or at least since the first Persian Gulf War in 1991).

Worst of all: most Americans do not want to get involved in Syria.  And it's not just the Far Right population opposing Obama's stance on Syria simply on principle (of hating Obama).  And even in the face of the growing humanitarian disaster that is the refugee crisis.  We've been burned out by 10-plus years of unending wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Getting lied to by Cheney and Bush the Lesser about Saddam's WMDs is affecting the national mood.  If Congress votes No on Syria - and after my earlier contention that Congress might go along, there's signs now that the Far Right might not give Obama this - Obama will have no political cover to push for a strike.  He could still order it - the War Powers has yet to be constitutionally upheld, and it's in a grey area at best - but Obama would be held responsible on both the national and international stage for ignoring the people he's supposed to represent... and would be violating national laws he's supposed to uphold.

This is where Obama would be looking for a third option... an alternative solution to cut the Gordian Knot he's just tied himself into.

Who would have thought it would be diplomacy and NOT the sword that might actually solve the problem?

Secretary of State Kerry seemingly threw out there during a meeting with the UK Foreign Office the possibility that if Russia could talk Syria into giving up control of their chemical weapon stockpiles to international observers (UN most likely), it might resolve the issue and make a military strike moot.

When the State Department tried to talk back Kerry's statements, making it look like an off-the-record "gaffe" (wink wink), Russia's Foreign Minister quickly responded with favorable language, and Syria's foreign minister joined in.  This is kinda how Hollywood works when movie blockbusters have to be ironed out between supersized egos, I've been told.

If it turns into something that can get worked out between the key parties, the whole matter of chemical warfare - one of the Big No-Nos of fighting - could be taken out of the equation.

It won't resolve the civil war itself: Assad is fighting for his life, with his minority ethnic clan struggling alongside him, against a nationwide uprising against his family's brutal decades-long rule.  It will, however, get Obama and the United States out of a nasty political nightmare and give the major powers involved - Russia, US, France, Britain, Turkey and Iran - some room to maneuver regarding the Syrian disaster.

And who knows?  This diplomacy thing might catch on across the rest of the Middle East.  Trick is, of course, to make sure the goddamn killing stops first...

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The Massive Disconnect Between The Voters And The Elected

Among the many things bothering the hell out of me regarding Syria - the real need to focus first on the refugee crisis, the need to stop Assad's use of chemical weapons versus the inability to really do anything about it other than an outright invasion and all the horrors THAT would entail, the realization that the entire Middle East from Egypt to Libya is in total chaos and we're unable as an international power to focus on any of that - is this simple fact:

A vast majority of Americans are polling as opposed to any military strike or action on Syria... and our elected officials (and their friends in the Beltway media) are still poised to vote in favor of it.

Link to Pew Research Center's results:

Also wik:

Yet just right now, the Senate Foreign Relations committee overseeing such issues just voted 10-7 in favor of a "limited military response" to Syria's use of chemical weapons.  There's still a full Senate vote I believe and also a House resolution, but most of the experts believe that both parties may go along with approval (Dems because they have the need to back their party's nominal leader, Republicans because there's a sizable faction of neocon interventionists seeking to "tame" the Middle East through superior firepower).

Usually elected officials are more aware, more alert to the reality that voting whole-heartedly against their constituents' opinions tends to be a bad idea.  They're at least aware of the risks: even during the health care reform debates a good number of Democrats openly worried they would lose seats over passing any reform despite the fact that everybody knew health care costs needed to be controlled somehow.

Yet with the Syrian military strike as an issue, there's this kind of intellectual if not emotional disconnect to what's happening.  None of the politicians seem to be pointing to the poll numbers or worrying about how this plays "back home" with their voters.  If there are any, I'm not seeing them speak up on the news channels or websites.  (If there's at least one, please pass along the link)

Sullivan points it out clearly:

I cannot remember a war in which the public in the most affected countries is so opposed. And that opposition is not likely to melt in a week or so – certainly not if many people listened to John Kerry yesterday. And that poll is about the abstraction of “strikes” – and not about the open-ended war to depose Assad that the administration actually proposed in its own resolution. Mercifully, Americans are not as dumb as many think...

I don't consider the polling about invading Iraq in 2002 to be of relevance here: considering that Congress and the public were lied to about Saddam's having WMDs as an excuse to go in, the general public support for that invasion/occupation is kind of an illusion.

There's been times that the DC "establishment" were not in tune with the nation as a whole: the obsessive hate-on for Clinton (not just the GOP but the media elites and power-brokers operating in DC) that made many voters side with him when the Lewinsky scandal broke is a recent example.  But this time it's troubling.  This time, lives - ours and Syrians - are at stake.  The chaos of the Middle East may well get worse if military action takes place.  And there's no guarantee that the planned missile strikes will do anything productive.

In a situation where diplomacy makes the most sense - the possibility of getting with Russia and Iran, Syria's primary backers, both of whom are troubled by the gas attacks as well - it's terrifying that nobody in DC wants to argue for this as a sensible alternative.

This isn't Munich.  Like Conor points out - "For Hawks, it is always 1938" - there's no Chamberlain-esque appeasement here other than trying to find something that would stop the damn bloodshed:

Every part of that part of that argument is wrong. The war weariness of post-WWI Britain was very different from the war weariness of present day America, and an unwillingness to strike dictators who kill their own people is not the same as appeasement. By Hirsh's logic, it is imperative that we immediately invade North Korea because otherwise we are appeasing it, and inviting it to begin a blitzkrieg across the Western world, because Hitler. The approach he implies -- intervention wherever there is a dictator or a mass murder -- is a recipe for far more war, and far more misery from war.

One of our nation's biggest problems hasn't been the partisan brinkmanship, the incessant noise machine drowning out policy solutions, the sheer amount of money in the electioneering business (seriously, it's in the billions now), it's been the Lack Of Accountability.  We're having one of those Lack Of Accountability moments.  And everyone's failing the moment.

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I'm With Mistermix and Balloon Juice On This One: If We Wanna Help Syria...

The current situation with Syria is that, sadly, there's still fighting going on.  The U.S. plan to target certain Syrian facilities hit a snag with the British Parliament - burned by the lies over Iraq, thank you very much Dick Cheney - voting against military action, which means the international political cover isn't there... unless Obama decides to push for NATO or UN (very unlikely, as Russia might balk) or even wonder of wonders CONGRESSIONAL support.

But in the meantime, Mistermix over on Balloon Juice made this observation:

Food, water, shelter and sanitation for refugees is nowhere near as sexy as war, so this is getting little attention. If, as Juan Cole recommends, Obama decides to pivot and move to diplomacy after losing British support, focusing on the plight of refugees and using our airlift to send them aid would be smart politics as well as good policy.

This makes absolute perfect sense.  If we're supposed to be doing this on humanitarian grounds, focus on the humans first and foremost.  Get food and shelter and medical help to the refugees right now, Mr. President.

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Egypt and Syria and the Mess of the Middle East

There's serious concern about Syria's troops under Assad using chemical weapons, reports are now up to thousands of civilians dead.  Considering the use of chemical weapons is a dire matter, if the reports pan out the United States and NATO (with neighboring Turkey coping with the stress of it all) will be under even greater pressure to take direct action.

Egypt is undergoing another round of violence between the military and the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Middle East remains a total mess.

It'd be nice to see an end to the violence and bloodshed, an end to the hate between nations and tribes.

But outside of just putting up massive barricades everywhere and cutting off the supply of weapons to the region, how the hell can you fix it?  Besides, people will figure out how to get around those barricades.  And worse, people will figure out how to smuggle in weapons, especially when the biggest gun dealers on the planet happen to be the permanent members - USA, Russia, China, France and UK - of the UN Security Council, and there's money to be made in war.  The dollars, always the dollars...

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Losing Egypt

I wrote earlier this year during the early stages of the Morsi ouster that no one - not the U.S., not NATO, not the Middle East, not the Egyptian general, not the Egyptian politicians, not the Muslim Brotherhood, not the Egyptian people - was "winning" Egypt.  Winning in terms of Egypt becoming a stable, self-sustaining republic/democracy.

Yesterday, sh-t got worse:

Egypt's military-installed government crossed a Rubicon on Wednesday by sending in the security forces to clear the camps of demonstrators demanding the reinstatement of President Mohamed Morsi. Within hours, the contours of the landscape the country had entered became brutally clear: 235 confirmed deaths and the possibility of many more; running battles breaking out in cities around the country; a state of emergency; night-time curfews imposed on 10 provinces. The bloodshed caused by interior ministry troops opening fire with shotguns, machine guns and rooftop snipers on largely peaceful sit-ins took its first major political casualty on Wednesday evening. The leading liberal who had supported the military coup, Mohamed ElBaradei, resigned as acting vice-president. The streets around Rabaah al-Adawiya became Egypt's Tienanmen Square.

The Rubicon being crossed is clear: before Wednesday, there had been the possibility, however faint, that cooler counsel would prevail in the Egyptian military mind – that, with the release of Muslim Brotherhood leaders arrested on phony charges, a way could be found to announce a national unity government pending fresh parliamentary and presidential elections. Formidable obstacles remained, not least the undoubted unpopularity of Mr Morsi's rule among a large section of the population and his non-negotiable demand to put the constitutional clock back to the eve of the coup that toppled him. The prospect of an early reconciliation between the two camps has now disappeared...

Egypt is now coping with a full-on coup, with the generals on their own.  They own this, including the damn bloodshed.  And they're now losing Egypt: they may hold on through brute force, but that is all they will have, fear bordering on hatred.  And you can't rule a people that hate you.

And the United States and the Western powers are going to be losing this too, real quick, if they don't go public to denounce the violence and above all cut off military aid to Egypt.  If we don't, we'll be back to the days of the Cold War when the U.S. owned every conservative military coup across South America, Africa and the Middle East, and was (still are) hated for it decades later.  All the anti-American hyperbole floating out there?  That's our payment due for all the sh-t we allowed in Iran (1953) Chile (1973), Guatemala (1954), Vietnam, Panama...

We own the Egyptian generals.  The Egyptian generals own this current (and ongoing) massacre.  We're losing Egypt.  We're losing the Middle East.  We ought to be looking at taking care of, you know, the ACTUAL PEOPLE in these Middle Eastern countries struggling for open societies rather than playing with puppets wielding guns...

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