Sunday, June 15, 2014

Iraq & Syria Sorted by Waleed Aly

Thank God we've got Sydney Morning Herald columnist Waleed Aly around to explain where we went wrong in Iraq and Syria. We'd be all so confused otherwise:

If only Bush hadn't intervened in Iraq:

"Over 11 years ago we entered a war of choice on a pretext that was always dubious and proved ultimately false... the invasion has unleashed forces we simply cannot pretend to have under control."  (Middle East meltdown: Blowback from invasion of Iraq unfolds to haunt the West, Waleed Aly, 13/6/14)

If only Obama had intervened in Syria:

"... in Syria, where a ruler every bit as brutal as Saddam Hussein is in the process of enacting mass violence against his own people. This is a ruler who has merrily danced across what Barack Obama declared to be his 'red line' by using chemical weapons* against them. Obama ran an anaemic campaign for military intervention in Syria that went nowhere. These days he regards Syria merely as 'somebody else's civil war'.** We will never know what would have happened had America intervened. But we do know that Bashar al-Assad had free rein to unleash brutal force, thereby radicalising the environment and laying down a magnet for Sunni terrorist groups.**"

Wait a minute!

"Mosul is in terrorist hands because we blew the lid off Iraq..."

So we shouldn't have squished Saddam, right?

"... then refused to help put it back on Syria."

But we should have squished Bashar, yeah?

Hang on!

[*Wrong! See my 8/4/14 post About That Gas Attack in Syria...;** So the Americans, the Turks, the Saudis and the Gulf monarchs had absolutely no hand in "unleash[ing] brutal force, thereby radicalising the environment and laying down a magnet for Sunni terrorist groups," just Bashar?]

5 comments:

TD said...

He is simply an apologist for Islam and we Australians take way too much notice of his opinions. I can't see the point of his article at all. Why support Hussein and not Assad?

MERC said...

TD, does Islam need an apologist any more than any other religion? Nor is there anything to indicate that Aly supports Hussein.

MaliceInWonderland said...

We will never know what would have happened had America intervened.
I find this statement by Aly completely disingenuous. Anyone paying an attention to the repercussions of US intervention in the region knows exactly what would have happened.
After all, their modis operandi is fairly predictable. One only needs to look at Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or even Kosovo.

Anonymous said...

Walid Aly is just an Uncle Tom! He's the ABC's attempt to prove that it isn't biased about the Middle East while it goes on calling Hamas "militants" and taking the IDF's version of every killing of Palestinians.

TD said...

Sorry Merc I must have misread it. I took it that he was against the overthrow of Hussein but *for* the overthrow of al-Assad