On 10/21/15 5:04 PM, Michael Meeropol wrote: > Sorry, Louis, I do not see Chomsky as going "to the deep end" on this > one. He argues that the militarization of the Syrian Civil War has > marginalized any and all of the "good people" and the battle is now > between the murderous Assad regime (he clearly is not an apologist for > that regime) and the proxies of Saudi Arabia and Turkey represented by > the retrograde jihadi groups -- ISIL and Al-Nusra.
But that was not what I criticized him for. I personally don't have much hope in a favorable outcome for Syria because of the presence of such groups. Assad created the conditions for a sectarian dead end and succeeded beyond the wildest expectations. My beef with Chomsky is only on the points I dealt with. > > I suppose the argument could be that IF the US had gotten involved in > 2013 right away and "taken out" Assad as we "took out" Saddam Hussein, > then the Syrian Civil War might have been aborted and a new enlightened > democractic government might have been installed. Chomsky is skeptical > that in fact that would have happened -- witness what actually occurred > in Iraq -- or Lybia for that matter ... Again, this is not what I wrote about. As a matter of fact, I oppose all intervention whether from the USA or Russia. > > Chomsky does leave room for "some" humanitarian interventions to > actually exist but (as you may know from his analysis of the Pacific War > during WW II) he has always argued that almost all interventions are > CLAIMED to be "humanitarian" and that IN FACT they rarely are --- they > are usually very much in the interest of the intervenor with very little > benefit for those being "rescued" (viz Lybia again. That being the case, why did he refer the audience to Cockburn who has been shamelessly promoting Russian bombing? > > I missed his comment on Guantanamo -- maybe he wrote that somewhere else. Thanks. I missed putting in a link for that: http://www.alternet.org/putins-takeover-crimea-scares-us-leaders-because-it-challenges-americas-global-dominance > > So, I guess, Louis, I don't see what your complaint is about what he had > to say in answer to the question about Syria. > Okay, to make it as succinct as possible: 1. He was wrong to deny that Russian intervention was imperialist. 2. He was wrong to hold up Patrick Cockburn as an expert on Syria. Cockburn has not only lied profusely about Syria but is now advocating Russian bombing. 3. He was wrong to claim that Russia was ready to conclude a peace deal in 2012 that would have amounted to Assadism without Assad. Russia insisted on Assadism with Assad. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
