Posts by Alex Coleman
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About half way through this:
http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player/2568245
Josie Pagani on the panel lays out her case for why doing something is imperative, gets the Powell doctrine almost completely wrong, ignores the idea that even if you do this to stop CW use that there will be other consequences to it than that, and generally makes me despair. Thankfully Gordon McLauchlan and a ethics prof(?) from Aklnd University are there to provide some thought.
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Hard News: This time it's Syria, in reply to Bart Janssen,
And an order of magnitude more difficult to ensure that the “good” gain power.
And then there is the fact that it is already a regional war. the death toll in Iraq is about 2000 over the last two months. The flow of refugees between the two countries over the last decades numbers in the millions. That's a lot of potentially radicalised people who will wanting a homeland to call their own.
And then there's Hezbollah and Lebanon. Will Hezbollah stay in Syria? Will the Lebanese government seize the chance to assert its authority into the south where Hez. rns the show? It's thorny mess that western leaders need to be clear about with their people as to what it is they are potentially getting themselves in for.
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Hard News: This time it's Syria, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
There’s no such thing as a perfect plan :)
The senate authorisation is pretty ‘creepy’ compared to what Obama was saying just a few days ago. Lots of shifty language, and the goals now include changing the civil war:
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed a resolution Wednesday saying a goal of U.S. policy will be to “change the momentum on the battlefield’’ in Syria’s civil war and speed a negotiated removal of Mr. Assad. The measure would ban the use of ground forces in Syria “for the purpose of combat operations” and sets a 60-day limit for Mr. Obama to launch strikes. It includes a possible 30-day extension if Mr. Obama determined that was needed to meet the resolution’s goals.
Wonder how much attention the ‘non-vetted’ opposition groups are going to be getting. If the US is planning on tipping the balance of the war in favour of ‘moderate’ groups who are currently losing ground to Islamists…
Edit: oops, linky http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324577304579054973488682120.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTTopStories
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Hard News: Jonesing, in reply to Sam M,
I agree you should be reasonable, but I do not think it unreasonable for a person to have a drink the evening when travelling for work.
I don't really have a problem with paying for a minister to have a nightcap after a day negotiating with hard arsed Eurocrats, but what stuck in the craw was when I saw that they were choosing to just use the euro hotel minibar, paying euro hotel prices in euros for a bloody miniature of johnny walker red. Why not get a bottle of something decent at duty free, for the love of christ?
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Hard News: This time it's Syria, in reply to Russell Brown,
I think the stated point is that it will punish Assad for CW use. So 'just airstrikes' is something you could, in theory, calibrate to do that but not affect the civil war.*
But mission creep is already creepy creeping in with talk of regime change as a 'collatoral effect', So I'm suspicious that when people start getting hurt, the administration's stated determination not to respond to what Assad does next in the civil war will be tested quite firmly.
So maybe (big maybe), that mission creep *is* the plan, and a much bigger involvement is planned than what is being talked about now.
*(as an aside, if I had to suggest a target list to achieve that I'd say "His navy. Sink it")
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And this :http://t.co/6j6gKrMFwM from the European Council on Foreign Relations outlines the paramters of what the debate should be to my mind, and is almost exactly the sort of thing we didn't see before Iraq.
I think the real lessons of Iraq were about how the decision was made. If politicians lie their way into a war, if they aren't up front about what the risks and expected costs and likely length of the war are, then their people won't support it. And the war will be fought based on what the people will accept rather than on what is needed to achieve the war aims. Which means you will lose. So getting the consent for the war that will be actually fought is crucial.
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Here's a thing:
A brief post about a study looking at the effects of intervening in a civil war on casualty rates. There's a link the full study there, but limited interventions on the side of rebels tend to increase casualty rates by about 40% for the rebels, as the govt military is degraded, loses c&c discipline and becomes more desperate. Recommends that if you are going to do it, you need to establish safe zones etc.
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Legal Beagle: The Police Investigation…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
‘de-liberate’ heh.
You could interpret what he said as meaning that spying on nonresidents isn't against the crimes act.
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Key says: "Under the Crimes Act it's whether they deliberately intended to take an action against somebody that they knew to be a New Zealand resident, and they didn't."
http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/top-stories/18720126/key-backs-police-decision-on-dotcom-spying/
So that's that then I guess.
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A few military type heavy hitters going on the record in this WaPo piece about the risks of escalation:
Whether or not that's intended as a warning to the President or a signal from him, is a 'known unknown' I guess.