Topic: Dylith, Iraq, Kurdistan, and so forth (Read 3715 times)

Sorry to disappoint, but none of the posters in this thread are human, they are computer bots.

I think the us would have say in any international conflict if the us were to not be afraid to carry its "big stick" instead of leading from behind.

I didn't realize that my work was so inspiring that it was worthy of mimicry on such scale.

I commented on it thusly because I found the notion that we will have any sort of significant sway in Saudi Arabia's internal political struggle (regardless of who is sitting in the Oval Office) a bit surprising.

What sort of plan do you see a president as having? Can you give me a general concept? Clandestine activity of some sort?

It also isn't necessarily the duty of the President to come up with a fine detail plan for something like that anyway. So I'm not sure what you mean by "he doesn't have a plan". I'm sure that the DoD has several 'plans' on file or in the works and has for years. That's actually one of the things that made Bush so horrible with foreign policy is that he often "shot from the hip." Working with and trusting your bureaucrats and specialists is pretty important for things like this.

This is an interesting response, and telling in a way.

You're asking me how much "say" the US will have. The answer if Obama is president is virtually none, because I doubt he has any plans. However, like or hate him, Bush would have had plans. And they would be based on the interests of the current leaders, simply because he did have a relationship there. Is that a guarantee of anything? Of course not. But he would have had an opportunity. Which is about all you can have, non militarily.

Now I'm confident we both know that a direct endorsement of any candidate would backfire. But that is the same in any country. If Israel directly endorsed any candidate, it would probably destroy their chances. If any other country did, it would have the same result. That's elementary and pointless to even mention, so I'm surprised you mentioned it. I find it telling in the sense that the likely reason you did is that you believe Obama to be unprepared for it also.

How much influence do you think ANY US president would have in an internal struggle among the Al Sauds and the internal religious institutions? Do you honestly think that we'll really have any significant say in the end there regardless of who is in office? Our public backing of any individual candidate in Saudi Arabia is more likely to hurt them domestically than help them. In order to come out on top, any Prince in likely going to need to court the religious institutions and being a friend of the US isn't likely to help with that.

Just like everyone knew that the Muslim Brotherhood would come to power, it was always likely that their first term would be a heavily unpopular one paving the way for the military to exert more influence. It was inevitable given the dual difficulties of a shattered tourism industry over the protests and unrest, and the simultaneous rising in basic commodity prices due to the global economic recovery (to say nothing of the difficulties of forming a new constitution). Can't say that I expected an outright coup, but I doubt the administration was too surprised by it.

The Muslim Brotherhood was always going to take over should the government be opened up democratically. Everyone knew this and we knew that the fall of Mubarak meant the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. There was little that could be done in that case. Not sure what dictator you expected us to try to prop up in Mubarak's place nor how you expected President Obama to accomplish such a thing. Even when the army broke electoral law to try to prevent Morsi from winning, he still won. Even when the army tried to prevent popular Muslim Brotherhood candidates from running (in clear violation of the principles of democracy) the Brotherhood still came out on top. The Muslim Brotherhood didn't win through clean elections, they won despite dirty play from the military. Not sure what else you would have expected us to do that the Army itself didn't do?

I find this a bit unfair and one sided. The situation in Sudan was "uncontrollable" but even larger and more massive protests and military intervention in Egypt was supposed to be controllable? Nimiery wasn't ousted because of the civil war, the military took over because of northern political pressure and popular unrest (once again not the unrest in South Sudan or Darfur). You seem to be under the idea that we had any real control over whether or not regime change would occur in Egypt without ever stating why you think that. We verbally encouraged democratic reform which was the same thing that Reagan did in Sudan. What would you have had us do? Deploy troops and gun down the protestors? hyperbole to be sure, but I don't understand how you see the US as having possibly prevented regime change in Egypt. The very notion seems to rather ignore what was happening internally in Egypt. Likewise, if you notice I've never given President Obama credit for the regime change in Tunisia, or Yemen, and that's because we didn't do it. Just like we didn't do it in Egypt.

I should also point out I think it will be very chaotic if the infighting in the House of Saud starts while Obama is still in power. Perhaps it's bias, but I don't think he has a game plan to take advantage of events to edge towards an outcome most beneficial to the US. No one could guarantee one, of course.

Numeiry was the most pro-US leader that an independent Sudan has had. A lot of African states (even those who sided with us during the Cold War) espoused the ideology of African Socialism, that didn't prevent us from working with / supporting them, and Reagan did absolutely work closely with Nimeiry and Egypt to counter Gaddafi in Libya, the triple coalition was a cornerstone of our foreign policy in the area. Of course we didn't align perfectly with him (we didn't with Mubarak either) which is why, when the time came, both presidencies publicly supported "democratic" reforms / transitions, particularly when the militaries of both states stepped in to enforce it.

You're seeming to want to conflate uncontrollable circumstance with allowing situations to develop. I wasn't particularly saying that the US would do everything in it's power to keep any dictator in control, because the individual dictators are of little consequence. One of the differences in Egypt was disinterest in supporting Mubarak even a little, and not trying to push another dictator in behind. Unless you're indicating that Obama structured the Muslim Brotherhood to fail so that another military dictator could waltz in a year or so later in a coup with American support.

If I believed that, I would gain a lot of respect for Obama's Machiavellian-ism, although maybe not his ethics.

Regime change is something that pretty much every presidency has to deal with to one extent or another. President Obama is facing a larger challenge on that front than his predecessor (George W. Bush) due to the Arab Spring, but he played it very pragmatically in Egypt, Libya, North Korea, Yemen, and largely in Pakistan as well (since the new regime came into power largely while he was first taking office), if a little timidly in Syria.

President Obama's big departure from our past engagement in Egypt was that he was willing to talk to the Muslim Brotherhood, which was pretty pragmatic considering that they were the obvious candidates for control of a post-Mubarak government.

Well, the Reagan/Sudan thing is not as one dimensional as you seem to be saying. This isn't particularly an area I'm overly familiar with, but saying the Nimeiry admin was "the most pro American" is a bit disingenuous. He came to power as a pro socialist/pro pan Arabist, neither of which was particularly pro American foreign policy. He did become somewhat of an American ally, but when he started with the Sharia law thing, he essentially caused a civil war that he couldn't be protected from.

I mentioned Sudan under Reagan which I mentioned the last time we discussed Egypt, because it is located in the same geo-political region, and was part of our triple alliance between the US - Egypt -and Sudan.

I reference the Nimeiry Administration which was probably the most pro-US administration to ever exist in the Sudan, and one that fell to populist protests / demands for democracy while Reagan was in office (the military intervened to form a transitional government much like Egypt's military did).

Despite how heavily we relied on Sudan to check Gaddafi's growing influence in Chad and his moves in eastern Libya (Sudan is a historical and current weapons smuggling route to both the Middle East and North Africa) the US has to and did, under Reagan pay homage to a more democratic process even though it left us with a leader who was much more adverse to the Untied States, not to mention the subsequent toppling of that administration by Bashir in 1989 (a coup which took place under HW Bush).

President Obama pretty much followed the same standard course with Egypt, only we've maintained better working relations with the end result (Sisi's government) than we managed to with the end result in Sudan (though we still do share intelligence there).

I also think that saying that we "let him fall" rather suggests that we had more control over the issue than we actually did. It would be like saying that Reagan "Let Nimeiry fall" when I think it would be more appropriate to simply say that we rolled with what was largely happening on the ground and defaulted during unstable times to our general talking points which favor democratic reform.

We saw the same process under HW Bush in Africa starting in 1989 and especially in the early 1990s with the fall of many of Africa's notorious big men (even those that had been aligned with us during the Cold War). Kaunda fell in 1991, Siad Barre also in 1991, etc

Under Clinton Hastings Banda fell in 1994, Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997, etc.

Under Bush W: Pervez Musharraf fell in 2008.

Before I go any further, I don't recall you talking about Sudan and Reagan...what was your point there? Because as you know, Sudan was at most a pawn in issues relating to Ethiopia. And the Leadership in Ethiopia making close connections with the Soviet Union. If you're talking about Reagan possibly picking winners and losers in a peripheral fight in Ethiopia, then that isn't exactly the same as letting hand picked dictators fall.

Probably the largest venue in which we let ideology get in the way of "good business" has been with China and its human rights record, but even there he has been much more vocal about things like Chinese theft, Chinese cyber attacks, and in Asian sea disputes which has strained relations anyway.

In Egypt, he allowed the dictator previously supported to fall. This is specific to Egypt, and has caused some issues, none of which are terribly important to the US at this time. Other presidents have done different things in different countries because it probably made sense at the time, in that particular place. Letting dictators fall is rare, even though it has been done when the dictator tried to bite the hand etc. I'm not familiar with any hand biting in Egypt.

You didn't really give a country example. We've already been over Egypt and noted how his stance there has been pretty consistent with historical US policy, particularly when compared to Reagan's dealings with Sudan, and we talked about Libya, where the US has long opposed Gaddafi.

So where else are we talking about? If anything I've found the current administration to be MUCH more pragmatic than the previous one. We've handled the DPRK better, Burma better (both more pragmatically) and we've pulled out largely from Iraq and Afghanistan while simultaneously keeping a clearly non-ideological based drone program active.

The general policy of injecting instability into countries, and either publicly or privately assisting tough dictators hold on to power. And inserting them into power in some cases. I'm not speaking of public policy, but rather the pragmatic side of it.