On Syria and Western imperialism
Barack Obama and French president Francois Hollande have been constantly flirting with the idea of waging a war on Syria in order to set the people free.
An alarming report which caught my attention showed me that quite the contrary would happen if they were to intervene. Nearly half of the rebels are Islamists who are certainly not striving for democracy and freedom.
All Christians of the region (and of Irak) I talked with told me that a Western intervention would most likely replace the “light” dictatorship of president Assad by a Muslim theocracy where the rights of non-Muslims and women will be considerably worse than they currently are.
Apparently, many Western leaders have not learned any lesson from the debacle in Irak.
On the one hand I can understand their willingness to save the life of countless people in less developed countries where people are being slaughtered.
On the other hand I feel irritated by the fact they imagine they are morally and intellectually so superior to the third world that they have the right and the might to wage any war they wish.
I think this still reflects rather well the feelings of the father of French secularism, Jules Ferry, as he stated: “it is a right for the superior races, because they have a duty. They have the duty to civilize the inferior races.”
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Iwer Syrien un de westliche Imperialismus
“S’isch e Rächt der hähere Rasse, weil sie hon e Pflicht. Sie hon e Pflicht, de unnere Rasse ze zivilisiere”.
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lotharlorraine 
“On the one hand I can understand their willingness to save the life of countless people in less developed countries where people are being slaughtered.”
– Well… I´d love to agree with that, but I´m very cynical when it comes to reasons for military intervention. There are only a handful of exceptions IMHO where one could reasonably argue that compassion for innocent civilians played a non-negligible role in the process that led to the decision to intervene.
“Das erste was im Krieg stirbt ist die Wahrheit.” – this saying is, unfortunately, completely true. All this talk about “helping civilians” from politicians is nothing but empty drivel. What actually happens is a very simple cost-benefit analysis – is the war profitable or not (with “profit” being the political gain (or loss) from the electorate, financial support from wealthy donors for politicians and an expansion of influence over foreign countries, and of course the expected money that is to be gained by the military-industrial complex).
If the war is expected to be profitable, then the ruling class will happily support the war and even lie to the electorate in order to gain support (e.g. Iraq or Vietnam) and if the war is expected to not be profitable, they will find any excuse to do jack shit (e.g, the Rwandan genocide).
And for the military-industrial complex, EVERY war is profitable, the only people that risk losing something are politicians if the war doesn´t go as expected, and the civilians if it turns out that the intervention made everything much worse than it already was (for the USA, that would be EVERY intervention except for Germany and South Korea).
I fear you might be entirely right about the way wars are decided.
To your mind, are Obama and Hollande lying to us? Or are they sincere puppets?
Übrigens was denkst du vom Dialekt meiner Region? 🙂
politicians will claim that they do not lie, they may, however, occasionally prevaricate.
Dei Mundart is leiwand, Marc.
Alles klar, vielen Dank!
Ich habe folgendes über “leiwand” im Wörterbuch gefunden:
“Den Ursprung hat dieses Attribut in der Welt des Bieres.”
das hat mich nicht wirklich erstaunt 😉
Schade, dass ich 3000 Kilometer weit von Wien wohne…
Aber sage mal: falls Gott mich teleportieren würde, würdest du dich endlich bekehren? 😉
Und woran erkenne ich, Marc, daß die vermeinte Götter hinter Teleportation nicht einfach unbegreiflich intelligente Aliens sind? Oder begabte Irdlinge?
I worked in Afghanistan as a contractor for the Canadian military. My impression in general was that a lot of the NATO forces really did WANT to help people there and stabilize the region. Unfortunately, the reality of what was going on and what the people who were really in charge wanted (the good ol’ U.S. of A) were not conducive to helping that nation. In Afghanistan and Iraq I truly feel the priority of the U.S. was to make money for KBR and to squeeze the resources out of the countries. I also I observed that the policy seemed to be that civilian casualties were more acceptable than military casualties, meaning that they would rather bomb a village to hit one military target then risk military personal who had signed up. Not to say they treated their own so well either but it was a sad realization. Anyway, what is it now, 12 years later and the country is still a mess, in fact support for the Taliban is still there because at least they are Afghan and not some foreign military exploiting their country. I totally understand why Syrians would rather keep their current crazy dictator then trade in for being killed by American’s and then ending up with the crazy dictator they chose and an excuse for the extremist to get more extreme. Very sad.
Yes, it is a very sad state of affairs. I think these give to the people in these nations good grounds for hating the West.
In the end, such „humanitarian“ interventions end up bolstering the cause of radical Islamists who teach that a violent reaction against the Western world is the only way forward.
Yep, I’m afraid I have to share the pessimism here. The only kind of intervention that’s likely to improve matters is purely humantarian: Médecins Sans Frontières for example.
And yes, it was a Republican President who warned us about the dangers of the military-industrial complex. But America has shifted so far to the right that Obama is probably to the right of Eisenhower on many issues.
Obama has been an extreme disappointment in many respects.
And I voted for him. Probably still a good idea, given the competition.