On 6/29/14 2:04 PM, Robert Naiman wrote: > This is, as they say, making the rounds. > > __ > > > http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2014/06/moderate-syrian-rebel-application-form.html____ >
This satire would work better if there was any real threat of Obama constituting a real threat to the Baathists. Marxmailer Michael Karadjis responded to this: We should bear in mind that the US has already been "training and equipping" a few hundred (in total) "vetted" "rebels" (?) in Jordan over the last 9 months or so. That isn't a secret. That the size of the "vetted" force is tiny (a few hundred compared to 100-150,000 armed rebels) tells us a number of things. First, that the aim isn't to help a revolution, but precisely to try to undermine it. The kind of action such small elite forces would be engaged in would be more conspiratorial rather than mass-revolutionary. Thus since the US strategy since late 2011 has been the 'Yemeni solution', ie, a cosmetic face-saver for the regime to defuse the revolution, and Assadist regime without Assad, then at most I could imagine such a force being involved in conspiring with elements of Assad's military officialdom if a palace coup came to be on the cards. But that, I stress, is "at most." At very most. Second, that there are hardly any, relatively speaking, Syrian rebels that the US trusts. Often people confuse the US words such as "vetted" and "moderate" with the entire secular wing of the opposition. This is entirely incorrect. The overwhelming bulk of the FSA (a term I use to denote the specifically "non-political-Islamist" sector of the rebels) would have nothing to do with any of the US conditions, any more than any of the Islamists would. Someone said one such condition could be making "peace" with Israel, ie, giving up the Golan. Assad already did that years ago. But apart from one lone right-wing voice from exile I heard lately, there is no chance of any significant force in the opposition giving up the Golan. Israel's repeated stated preference for a weakened Assad over any of the opposition has always been above all based on the fact that it trusts Assad re the Golan more than any others. It obviously trusts Assad more on Palestine than any others too, since he's been a uniquely good jail-keeper. The other main condition, if not THE main condition, is that such "moderates" would turn themselves into a "Sawha" movement and launch a frontal attack on Jabhat al-Nusra, and perhaps other political Islamists. Fighting the reactionary ISIS is not good enough for the US. But there is no-one in the FSA ready to split the ranks of the anti-Assad and anti-ISIS resistance prematurely, and committing mutual suicide, just because the US demands it. Shane often fills his short outbursts on Syria with right-wing sounding islamophobic rants about "jihadists", a bin into which he sweeps not only the entire islamist wing of the uprising but even the secular. That method is quite common in the Murdoch media. But if shane fears the "jihadists" in Syria that much, he should make sure he votes for this US "aid." _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
